Disengagement Pathways: What Defector Programmes Still Miss

Leaving an armed group is only the first step. This article reviews how reception centres, screening and community return currently work for people coming out of Al-Shabaab-held areas — and where they fall through the process between those three stages.

It draws on practitioner interviews and comparative notes from other Horn of Africa programmes. Reception that treats everyone as a high-value source produces bottlenecks. Screening that cannot distinguish fighters from civilians produces both injustice and bad intelligence. Return that dumps people into a district without a local sponsor produces recycling back to the group or to crime.

The emphasis is on what can be fixed in the next twelve months: case tracking, family contact, and a clearer split between criminal investigation and reintegration support. It is not a call for a new institution with a new acronym.

Readers in security, justice and humanitarian agencies will find the same sequence described from each of their desks, so that the gaps between those desks are visible rather than assumed away.