‘In order to understand why end-users are (in)secure one needs a good empirical understanding both of their day to day experience of security and of the wider political and social forces shaping that experience and all too often disempowering them.’‍[1]

Both academic research and practitioner reports have contributed to a growing body of evidence demonstrating the political nature of security arrangements. Despite this, security programming for the ‘community level’ consistently frames security as an entitlement, and primarily focuses on insecurity in terms of the immediate threats experienced and reported by local people. This perspective and the approach it fosters can lead programmes to err on the side of the palliative, addressing outward symptoms of insecurity rather than its deeper drivers.

This report argues that programmes must account for and be responsive to the power structures and institutional forces that determine local security, rather than attending solely to the outcomes of these systems. Programme efficacy thus relies on understanding the relationships between powerful actors and institutions, and how they might be incentivised to become more responsive and accountable to citizens.

To this end, the report presents concepts and ideas for strengthening the integration of the ‘end-user perspective’ into the political analysis of the local security context. Leveraging local knowledge does not begin and end with asking people about their immediate security concerns or needs, as much common practice seems to assume. Rather, community members also hold a wealth of insights into how local power structures shape local security. These insights, however, are rarely gathered and even more seldom applied.‍[2] Building such knowledge could enable community security programme staff and local stakeholders to better analyse the environments in which they engage, and realistically assess the potential for encouraging behaviours and relationships that promote equitable security at the community level.

With this in mind, Section I argues for going beyond a needs- or entitlement-based approach to community security, as such an approach tends to ignore the power dynamics that the organisation and provision of security reflect and perpetuate. For this reason, more focus on politics and power is required in the analysis of community security issues and in programmes that seek to address them. On this basis, Section II outlines three concepts that can be applied as lenses to analyse powerful actors and authority structures at the local level. Such analysis is proposed as a complement to, not a replacement for, security needs assessments within communities. Finally, Section III demonstrates that particular institutional characteristics of international non-governmental organisations that support community security programmes matter a great deal for their approach to the analysis of community security – in addition to the quality of the analytical lenses they deploy and local complexities. Unpacking these characteristics provides a starting point for organisational self-profiling and for considering measures to improve analytical capabilities that could bring about better programming.