Hence, stabilization is an essential concept in relation to fragile and failed states, where basic institutions and services are lacking and where conflict is an influential factor.
[1] Stabilization processes are a multisectoral effort, requiring a variety different instruments that seek to secure the basic needs of the population and support the development of state-building to ensure the process is sustainable and builds stronger and more legitimate states These actions are primarily taken by western governments and national actors often involving a combination of military, political, development and humanitarian objectives, resources and activities to tackle transnational and domestic threats through short term security promotion.
This is because ‘islands of instability’ are seen as constituting sources of regional insecurity and contagion, particularly in their association with international terrorism, transnational crime and other real and existential threats.
In contexts as diverse as Afghanistan, Haiti and Timor-Leste, stabilization has emerged therefore as a key instrument of a broader liberal, transformative peace-building project.
As such, it extends beyond short-term or conservative objectives to eliminate immediate threats or merely to ‘stabilize’ temporarily situations of acute crisis to link action across a range of discrete policy spheres with the aim of reducing violence and establishing the political and social conditions necessary for recovery, reconstruction, development and a lasting peace.
[5] Such an understanding has been reached by donors such as DFID, the United Nations, the European Union and USAID and they have all been involved in security sector reform and efforts to improve justice, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste.
Insecurity can be increased by informal actors, as well as regional and international drivers of instability, such as organised crime, drug smuggling and Illegal arms trafficking.
[5] In Guatemala, impunity provided as part of the peace process since 1996, following a 30-year civil war, has allowed former members of the state security apparatus in charge of repression new opportunities for criminal activity.