DDR

In this section you will find:

• What is DDR?
• Diana Memorial Fund DDR Project
• DDR Bibliography

What is DDR?

Disarmament: The collection of small arms and light and heavy weapons within a conflict zone. It frequently entails weapons collection, assembly of combatants and development of arms management programs, including their safe storage and sometimes their destruction. Because many child soldiers do not carry their own weapons, disarmament should not be a prerequisite for the demobilization and reintegration of child soldiers.

Demobilization: The formal and controlled discharge of soldiers from the army or from an armed group. In demobilizing children the objectives should be to verify the child's participation in armed conflict, to collect basic information to establish the child's identity for family tracing, to assess priority needs, and to provide the child with information about what is likely to happen next.

Reintegration: A long-term process which aims to give children a viable alternative to their involvement in armed conflict and help them resume life in the community. Elements of reintegration include family reunification (or finding alternative care if reunification is impossible), providing education and training, devising appropriate strategies for economic and livelihood support and in some cases providing psycho-social support.

Diana Memorial Fund DDR Project

In October 2001, The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund awarded a grant to Child Soldiers International to:

• identify general principles to apply in programs designed to re-integrate child soldiers back into their communities
• help strengthen organisational infrastructure in Child Soldiers International
• make DDR core documentation available online and in main Child Soldiers International languages (English, French, Spanish)
• promote an online dialogue between DDR practitioners in the field of psycho-social aspects of working with child soldiers

With a further grant from the Diana Memorial Fund a survey of child soldier programmes in West Africa was carried out with a special focus on DDR.

DDR Bibliography 2009

In this updated bibliography, as in the 2005 edition, we have concentrated on presenting, in one document, articles and reports that are freely available online. We hope that such a ‘one-stop source’ will be particularly helpful for busy practitioners who either do not have easy access to libraries, or lack sufficient time/funding to research many such source documents. 

The bibliography continues to be organized under different headings, the main ones being ‘DDR’ (Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration), ‘Recruitment Use of Child Soldiers’ and ‘Gender’. In this edition, however, entries are grouped first by date and then by author. This should enable a swift perusal of reports published since 2004. Additionally, we have also indicated which country the reports refer to, with a ‘General’ category for those that aim to have a general, rather than a country specific, application. 

We hope that you will find this bibliography useful.  If you have suggestions for relevant online documents that could be included or other feedback you think important, please do contact:

Dr. Linda Dowdney (Editor, DDR Bibliography: ldowdney@child-soldiers.org)

Relevant DDR websites can be found under Links on the top navigation bar.