The Wagner Group and Security Sector Reform: Challenges With Prolonged Entrenchment
Document Type
Blog Post
Publication Title
Armed Groups and International Law
Publication Date
6-6-2025
Abstract
(Excerpt)
Security sector reform (SSR) is a highly complex and difficult process that aims to rehabilitate and, if necessary, rebuild state security forces to ensure accountability, civilian oversight, and adherence to the rule of law. This process is challenging in any context, but becomes more complicated when foreign actors and entities are involved and must be accounted for.
SSR is “the political and technical process of improving state and human security by making security provision, management and oversight more effective and more accountable, within a framework of democratic civilian control, rule of law and respect for human rights.” SSR addresses the strategic, organizational, and operational levels of state security forces – including the military, police, and intelligence services – to transform them into effective, law abiding forces with civilian oversight. In many scenarios, foreign security forces are involved in providing some or all of the aforementioned security activities – none to any greater degree than the Russian-backed Wagner Group, a quasi-private military company that operates in dozens of countries under opaque circumstances and unclear legal frameworks. It is this scale of operation and lack of accountability and oversight that creates a unique set of challenges where the Wagner Group is concerned.
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Available at: https://www.armedgroups-internationallaw.org/2025/06/06/the-wagner-group-and-security-sector-reform-challenges-with-prolonged-entrenchment/