Phases and Challenges of Security Sector Reform in the Experience of Bulgaria

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IT4Sec Reports 85 includes the main theses of a presentation at the “Oversight and Accountability of the Defense Sector” panel of the Annual Conference of the Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 22-23 June 2011. The report describes the Bulgarian experience along the three main phases of reform in the post-communist transition of the country: (1) Establishing key mechanisms for civilian control over the armed forces and protection of human rights in the early 1990s; (2) Building democratic defense institutions, starting in the late 1990s and continuing to be in the focus throughout the first decade of the new century; and (3) Transformation of the security sector as a whole – the current focus of reform efforts.