The podcast series "Donors Talk SSR" highlights areas and practices that are important to the international community in their efforts to provide strategic and operational assistance to support governance, security, and justice reforms in fragile and conflict-affected environments.

Each episode hosts an international expert. Together we explore good practices and identify gaps in both new and old SSG/R themes.

The first episode features our Senior SSR Advisor, Hervé Auffret. Hervé's 33-year old military career, served his home-country, France, as well as multiple nations across Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East to support human security and defence strategy design. In this episode, Hervé shares insights on the importance of the "human factor" in any defence institution.

The second episode features our SSR Advisor, Viola Csordas. Viola’s work has focused on the link between SSG/R and livelihood issues such as climate and environmental security, disaster reduction, and food security. In this episode, Viola shares insights and on-the-ground examples to highlight the important role the security and justice sector must play in ensuring basic human needs as well as ways in which the international community can operationalise the triple nexus.

The third episode features DCAF ISSAT’s Head of Advisory Field Support and Senior SSR Advisor, Dr. Anicia Lala.  It recognizes her significant contributions over the past 25 years to the fields of security, justice, governance, democratisation, peacebuilding, and conflict prevention, particularly in Africa. Through this podcast, Dr. Lala reflects on how SSR has developed in the African continent, including the persisting opportunities to continue to build momentum for change, and create opportunities for innovative solutions.

This fourth episode features our Justice Advisor, Shahzada Ahmad. Shahzada has over 15 years of experience in development and has worked across many contexts on legal framework reforms, rule of law, and access to justice. In this episode, Shahzada explores the emerging role of digitalisation and new technologies in justice reform, looking at success stories, challenges, and what international partners need to consider when supporting digitalisation projects related to justice reform.

The fifth episode features Georgia Hinds, Legal Adviser on New Technologies of Warfare in the Arms and Conduct of Hostilities Unit at the ICRC. Through the lens of her work at the ICRC, Georgia unpacks the “black box” of artificial intelligence, looking at the challenges of integrating AI in autonomous weapons systems, and what this means for the conduct of warfare and security governance.

More episodes soon available on DCAF Spotify channel