46°13′15″N 6°08′37″E / 46.220787°N 6.143574°E
 DCAF headquarters at Maison de la Paix, Geneva | |
| Founded | October 2000 |
|---|---|
| Type | Foundation under Swiss law |
| Headquarters | Maison de la Paix Geneva, Switzerland |
| Offices | Addis Ababa, Bamako, Banjul, Beirut, Brussels, Kyiv, Ljubljana, Niamey, Ramallah, Skopje, Tegucigalpa, Tripoli, Tunis |
| Member States | 54 states and the Canton of Geneva (2020) |
| Director | Ambassador Nathalie Chuard |
| Staff | 220 (2023) |
| Web Address | dcaf |
| Budget | 32 million CHF (2020) |
DCAF - /ˈdiˌkæf/; Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (French: Centre pour la gouvernance du secteur de la sécurité, Genève, German: Das Genfer Zentrum für die Gouvernanz des Sicherheitssektors) is an intergovernmental foundation-based think tank[1] that provides research and project support to states and international actors in improving security sector governance and reform (SSG and SSR).
DCAF was established in 2000 as the 'Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces' in the Canton of Geneva by the Swiss government and as of 2023 employs around 220 staff in 16 offices.
The Centre's founding mandate was to assist security institutions to reform themselves in ways that would help stabilize the fragile peace following the 1990s Balkans conflicts and during the democratic transitions of Central and Eastern Europe. At the time, ‘democratic control of armed and security forces' was considered a keystone of lasting peace and stability, under the OSCE's 1994 Code of Conduct on politico-military aspects of security.
The Centre was renamed 'DCAF – Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance' on 2 May 2019, and took on new branding.