Hello, everyone, and welcome to this session here. We're going to have today on the United States Institute of Peace Training of Peacekeepers, as well as with our guests, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, and their work on peacekeeper training. We're going to have a great conversation today about the evolution of peacekeeper training, both how it's evolved over time since the introduction of peacekeeping and where it should go into the future to face the new challenges we have today and the needs and the lessons learned we've learned through over the decades of peacekeeper training. Before we welcome our distinguished participants in this conversation, I just want to introduce a little bit about how peacekeeper training is so important to USIP, the United States Institute of Peace's mandate and mission. We have a mission here to mandate from Congress to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict. And peacekeeping training, peacekeeper training is a crucial part of that work. We have been working since 2008 on conflict management training for peacekeepers, and we've worked to train both UN peacekeepers and other peacekeepers headed off to the peacekeeping missions. And it's an essential part of how we work to not only help communities, I mean, help peacekeepers when they're deployed, both military and civilian peacekeepers, to work in engaging with communities and help the civilian, I mean, the side of peacekeeper training that brings communities together and both links peacekeepers and communities. It's an important part of how we help the management of conflict, both during active conflicts and in a post-conflict situation. But it strikes me, my own experience in the UN, I never really worked too long in peacekeeping, but I had a brief stint in Somalia embedded with the African Union in their civil affairs department and worked at the Amazon mission there with some of the different contributing countries. And what really struck me is that I won't name any countries in particular, but there was a range in the training that was quite obvious. And I know that the UN has its standard training modules and the standard training curriculum that it requires pre-deployment, but there's often other training that can be helpful and I think it's important that peacekeepers, when deployed, have all the tools that they need to both fulfill their mandate, but also ensure that they themselves are behaving in a way that is responsible and responsive to the needs of the communities that they work in. So I hope we can talk more about that today. The other little anecdote I will talk about from my own experience and you're not gonna hear from me, you'll hear from our participants, but when I first began in 2010 in the UN legal department, one of the issues I was working on in New York was the cholera outbreak in Haiti, which was allegedly, I think, later proven to be attributed to the Nepalese contingent there. And there were issues of whether or not who was responsible, was there any negligence, where was the liability? But regardless of fault and where that landed and how communities were compensated, it was part of a long legacy of sort of unfortunate and negative experiences the Haitian community had with the various peacekeepers that were deployed there to the stabilization mission. And we had a meeting just recently yesterday, actually, with some UN personnel, high-level UN personnel working on Haiti, and now the situation is very dire and desperate, and there's a need for some sort of force to do an intervention, and we can't find a resolution. They're trying to find a non-UN solution. Maybe they're gonna go back and try to find some UN solution that's acceptable to the Haitian people, but what we all know what is needed is some sort of hopeful support to Haiti and the Haitian people to help stop the violence of the gangs, important prints, but also elsewhere. And so it just speaks to this conversation, I think, the need to evolve, to learn, to have good training and good implementation of peacekeeping, and I really look forward to that conversation. Before the last thing I'll introduce, I'll say before we introduce our guests, is here at USIP, we also like to, when looking forward, look back to some of the positive lessons learned and when possible, the American contributions to that. And so I was reading this morning in preparation today about Ralph Bunch. And I think Ralph Bunch is an American hero, a Nobel laureate that is too often overlooked. He's an African-American who was a professor at Howard and was largely accredited to being one of the fathers of peacekeeping. He helped create the first peacekeeping force that went in 1948 to the UN truce supervision or organization, I think, UNSO, which is still there today in Jerusalem after the Arab-Israeli War. And then he was a major, major architect of the UNEF after the Suez Crisis. And he's a champion, a real American hero, and he's often overlooked, I think, too much here in the United States. So he's somebody we can remember as a real American person to admire and maybe draw on for the future when we look to how we deal with new problems. So that's my piece for today, but I also want to introduce our wonderful colleagues who will talk to us really from their rich, rich experience on peacekeeping training, peacekeeper training. So first off, we have, and I'm always bad at reading these announcements to just bear with me, we have William Chattali, and she is a senior program officer that leads USIP's conflict management training for peacekeepers program. Prior to focusing on peacekeeper training, William focused on the intersection between education and training management and security sector reform. Before joining USIP, we have assisted on and contributed to policy analysis and research projects led by the Oxford Criminology Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the United Nations Security Sector Reform Unit, and the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, covering socioeconomic and SSR issues in North Africa and other regions. William holds a master's in public policy from Oxford University where she explored the notions and practices of democratic policing. William has served, has had a rich background and has taught and trained for a long time. She's a true expert in her field and we're so happy to have her in this conversation. Ms. Clowdy approach heads the pre-deployment training and advisory team within the division for peace at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. She's assisting member states, international and regional organizations and other relevant stakeholders as they contribute to lasting peace and security. She has over 15 years of experience in capacity building, supporting individuals, organizations, institutions and societies from a systemic perspective. She has been working with numerous troop contributing countries for deployment to major UN peace operations, too many to name and with many different acronyms. So we will work on the acronyms as we go. We'll introduce them once like we're writing but it includes Manusma, Manuska, Manusco, Unmiss and many, many, many others, including Amazon, I see here. Prior to joining UNITAR, Ms. Croci worked for UN OCHA, the Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the African Union, the OSCE and NATO. Clowdy holds a PhD in human rights, politics and sustainability with a specialization on human rights and international humanitarian law. Welcome to USIP, Clowdy. And finally, Yaro Hamadou. He's one of the USIP's peacekeeper trainers. Mr. Hamadou is a retired gondarm from Burkina Faso. He's a former peacekeeper and a current peacekeeper trainer trained by and now delivering training with the USIP in their conflict management training for peacekeepers program, CMTP, we call it. Yaro has served in Burkina Faso's national gondarmory in a various positions and has had responsibilities such as training peacekeepers. He's worked with battalions, foreign police units and UN police advisors from Burkina Faso. He's been deployed to various UN and AU missions as a peacekeeper. Yaro served as a UN police officer and a peacekeeper in the field as well as a best practices officer in charge of knowledge management, best practices and lessons learned in the Office of the Police Commissioner within the United Nations African Mission in Darfur, Sudan. Yaro is now completing his master's degree in conflict peace and security and conflictology with UNITAR. So welcome all of you to this wonderful discussion. I think that we should start off because William knows much, much more than I do about our own peacekeeping training. So I will start with you to give just a brief overview before we start about the USIP's peacekeeper training and its history. And just before you get into the evolution and the details could you just give us a little run through about our program? Thank you, Andrew. USIP's training has gone through a wonderful period of growth and evolution over the years that is reflective I think of what pedagogical expertise has joined the team and has allowed this kind of content to grow but also has kept up to date in the breast of evolutions and peacekeeping mission realities as well as how the UN and other institutions have reflectively looked at what is going on with peacekeeping mission effectiveness, how communities react to peacekeeping in general. I would start by saying that this program has been live and living at USIP since 2008. It has considerably changed from being a, it responds to a need expressed to the US government in its support to peacekeepers through the ECOTA program at the time. A need that was expressed that basically peacekeepers need tools to manage violence in non-violent way and to manage conflict in non-violent ways. And as the team grew and as USIP basically met more and more peacekeepers over time this training has grown to become a much more direct and experiential training that is rooted in adult learning theory. And this is important for several reasons that I'll get into in a bit and that really defines our approach. To begin with, as we met with peacekeepers and as the training was delivered it has been very much an organic process of growth. It's not based singularly on or training materials that need to be followed. It very much takes its root from there from the UN core training materials for peacekeepers but it also is a reflection of the realities and the difficulties that peacekeepers and the communities that they are serving and protecting express. For example, when the protection of civilians mandate gained ground it is incredibly important and yet so many peacekeepers enter the pre-deployment training and leave it without a clear understanding of what it entails and what it implies. So what USIP's approach is to training is to turn that into a very real lived experience during the training before deployment and that is through the development of extensive scenarios of very deeply well thought out interactions of immersive learning experiences and by building on the knowledge that a lot of these people bring into the classroom. It's based on the understanding that without digging deep into their own experiences of conflict and this takes many forms in personal, professional and conflict war contexts you cannot basically make the learning stick in a sense. And so when USIP carried out an assessment that started in 2014 and then a report came out in 2017 which I encourage people to read it was a very important assessment that basically went to people and asked them what is missing, where are the gaps in peacekeeper training when it comes especially to a nonviolent conflict management. We found that there was a huge issue in terms of how peacekeepers manage conflict not only with the communities that generally face peacekeeping missions with some level of mistrust especially now with this information being one of the biggest concerns that the UN is seeing in terms of how peacekeeping missions are regarded but also in the very structures of the peacekeeping troops for example their own internal structures there have been issues with conflict management as what we came to see. And so our training is meant to improve mission effectiveness not just in terms of the relationship between the peacekeeper and the community members who have many grievances and issues that are legitimate and when dealing with peacekeepers but also internally in the peacekeeping mission itself how to manage conflict between troops in the hierarchy of that entity that operates under such levels of stress and hostility in some cases. So that's the reality that we tried to handle is how do you manage that conflict and how do we make our training realistic? How do we make sure that we are not approaching it in a didactic manner? How do we make sure that when they come into the room they are preparing for real scenario and not just memorizing resolution text memorizing what is stipulated in a mandate in a theoretical manner. So that was the biggest part of how we defined our approach. The second part of it is the people that developed this program for USIP and I can list a number of people particularly amongst them are Alison Milovsky Lana Lancaster and a number of different people who worked on it over time they made sure that they were bringing in experts from different fields. So it's very much rooted in specialization. So if we are to talk about gender and combating and preventing sexual exploitation and abuse then that needs to be designed and developed with the right people. If we're talking about what mediation looks like there are consultations with the right people who have that expertise. USIP's team that delivers the conflict management training for peacekeepers is actually a team that is based in the curriculum and training design team within USIP and so these are expert curriculum designers and educational specialists but the content is drawn from conversations with UNITAR conversations with specialists from the UN conversations with experts in their own right in dealing with these concepts in conflict contexts. Finally, the conversations perhaps the most important ones are with peacekeepers themselves. Every year USIP visits multiple learning lessons learned workshops that are actually encouraged and coordinated between the sorry the global peacekeeping operations initiative within the US government and these peace and troop contributing countries where they have their former battalions return discuss lessons learned discuss what has happened and then define changes to curricula and changes to the pre-deployment training itself. And so the most important contributions have come from peacekeepers themselves who have said this really was necessary or that really didn't help me as much as I thought it would or the way that I was trained on this to make sense of the actual context. And then there were conversations in our assessment and you can find a lot of this information in the 2017 report that talks about that were coming from the communities themselves from community members in peacekeeping contexts who felt that certain things that certain skills were missing in peacekeepers. So it's been a learning process. It's been very much built on community engagement on understanding what values peacekeepers need to have what mindset shifts are required keeping in mind that a 12 week pre-deployment training is you know it's difficult to create that mindset shift from being a soldier in your own country to being a peacekeeper in a different context and the difference in values that that requires. So I hope that answers the questions I would just finally touch on the key concepts or pillars of our training and those are very much about making sure that the mission mandate is understood by the peacekeepers that protection of civilians as a mandate is definitely understood and maybe Yaro can share a little bit about what he faces when talking about protection of civilians with different peacekeepers and then understanding power and what power dynamics exist when someone is a peacekeeper in a position of relative power compared to the community they ran understanding how that power operates and how they can use it for good and not for you know exploitation or you know any kind of dynamic that ends up harming the peacekeeping mission and the community of course understanding why communication is important different tools of conflict analysis are provided to the peacekeepers and then there is of course a huge focus on sexual exploitation and abuse embedded into that broader conversation about power and gender and socialization I will stop there and I hope that perhaps the other extremely experienced colleagues can share more and I'll also look forward to questions Thank you so much William and Claudia before I turn to you let me apologize deeply because this is a co-hosted event with Unitar the United Nations Institute for Training and Research as I understand so I should have explained and given you the floor to open as a co-host and as a participant in your own right but I think I have credit with Unitar I was a champion of Unitar in the UN for many many years so I continue to sing the praises of Unitar so please tell us about Unitar and how peacekeeping training connects to your broader mission as an organization or an institution within the UN over to you Claudia Thank you Andrew and really no worries protocol is not my strength so I didn't even notice so thank you for having us in this panel discussion and thank you William for introducing the program which I mean I will go into that in a second I see so many similarities between what you are doing and what we are doing but in general it's reassuring as well because it's very much the direction that the United Nations in general and the institutions that are supporting other contributing countries are taking so that's in a way it's reassuring I will go into the evolution of what we do a little bit more before that I take any opportunity to share a little bit more about Unitar which is not probably the most known agency of the United Nations but we do quite some work together with other UN agencies that is probably worth mentioning so we do exist since 1965 actually we see even before the UN United Nations Development Program and we have been created at that time very much to support new member states that were gaining independence after the decolonization program and really creating local capacities for them to enter into the international scene not only at the level of the United Nations but also regional organizations but even just to reconstruct their institutions at the national level so it has been a long, long path through the years and of course from 1965 to today the world has evolved in millions of different ways so our mandate has also evolved what has remained very much at the core of our work is this idea of being a direct support for member states so this doesn't mean we do not work with other UN agencies partner organizations but the core really of the work is supporting member states and that's where the involvement with the peacekeeping training is really relevant and this is where it came so as the member states were evolving and their contribution to the international peacekeeping security system evolved as well there was these realizations that many of these emerging countries were going to be very much involved in peacekeeping processes and from there like from their experience working with our agency in other domains that's from where the idea of creating a dedicated peacekeeping training program came about so it was a long process and it has evolved along with the evolution of peacekeeping I would say so you mentioned the first missions back in the days and we know how much has changed but this idea really supporting the member states prior to the deployment that's very much at the core of everything we do and this comes with training but also comes with other type of interventions that has evolved again along with the evolution of peacekeeping so initially like our peacekeeping training program was very much like focus on what we are doing the traditional task of peacekeeping so was I would not say that peacekeeping has ever been an easy day here because it's always about intervening into another country of course upon invitation but through the years and we made reference to the evolution of modern day inclusion of the protection of civilians clearly like the tasks that have been the peacekeeper have been asked to face and the roles that they have been asked to take on has evolved significantly and at the same time our training our training approach has evolved significantly along the way so on the one hand what we have seen is very much along with the increased complexity of modern day it's an expansion of our victims of course as the United Nations we are very much concerned about ensuring the harmonization standardization of the curriculum according to the US so there is a core component of training package that is being used for training which goes with specialized training packages depending on what component of the army now we are trying to release some corrections as well so depending on which components we train we can do this as well so there has been this evolution but also like this expansion sorry of the curriculum but also like there has been this strong interest throughout the expansion to look into where the expertise to ensure this expansion can come from and so the partnership with relevant institutions where for us it was really really essential to ensure us providing the product that can actually impact on the performance of the person that was there one thing that is important to mention about UNITA is that we are not mandated to set training standards so we are not of course we do understand what we train our participants on but we are not mandated to set the standards for the training these for us come from the United Nations and when the standards are not available we do rely on international experts the same way the process that you have been explaining it's never something that is just being developed for the sake of developing something and for us what is really like the starting point and that was the starting point when we started and we reconsider like our peacekeeping training program was if we look at the task that the peacekeepers are assigned once they are deployed how do we translate those tasks into training actually so that the training is directly made to the experiences that they will leave once they are deployed so for us very much in this with the evolution of the peacekeeping mission the concern was really like giving peacekeepers the practical tools to actually operate and to make a difference once deployed it's not about theories not about knowing the resolutions of course you should understand on which basis you are deployed in a country that's essential of course it's important that you understand what is the framework what is that you can do and you cannot do but how does this translate into your day to day work that was for us very much the focus of everything that we have been doing and so this idea of impacting on the performance has been especially in the last year with increased complexity with everything that we hear coming from the field this focus on performance has been our our guiding star is really how can we support peacekeepers that are deployed in these situations to actually perform efficiently and effectively understanding that if you look at the rates of fatalities in the field as well we are really if we are not doing our job correctly we are really in a position to potentially put at risk the lives of the people that are being deployed and that's a message that we have been passing very very strongly to our trainers which is another component of the work that we have been doing so on the one hand expanding the curriculum including really all the possible topics that would allow the personnel to perform once deployed so creating this strong linkage between training and reality what we are saying like I wrote it down creating this lived experience prior to deployment we sometimes even say there is no pre-deployment and deployment you come to the training that's when your deployment starts so it's really like creating this linkage but the other we realize that for them to understand the field for them to understand what they are going to face we need to give them the opportunity to interact to be trained by people that have the same experience that have seen it that have lived it that know what it means and so that has been very much the focus we have been giving into the selection of the training the trainers so making sure that the trainers have the field experience they do have an understanding of the one system potentially of other organizations as well that they can create this connection with the participants and they have done what they are training on so that has been really a mantra you don't train unless you know to do it yourself that has been very much a mantra for us and a crucial element the third way our our program has expanded over the years on the methodological approaches so we have realized and again we have made reference to this to create these lived experiences prior to the deployment, prior to reaching hitting the field you really need to use very alternative approaches to training to what we have seen before we have been we work with others we work with people that have been trained in security and defense forces where training is very often conceived in a very direct and instructor lead which is not always the best solution of course in some cases you need to have that approach but in some other cases you really need to try to have a stronger mix of experiences so we have been really like through a dedicated team that we have in Unida which is called Learning Solutions really like devising these solutions for training to make sure that when people come to the training it is not just about sitting in a classroom and listening to someone or looking at the PowerPoint with all respect for that but it is really like being engaged so to the point that then the knowledge of the skills that we are transferring I think so a lot of work has been done in this direction and the last dimension that we have very much exploring in this evolution is realizing that we talk a lot about training but training is a component of the capacity building when you look at capacity building capacity building contains a lot of difficulties. If you want and that's what we want to change the behavior so impacting this performance we want to look at medical advantages starting from does the person not have the appropriate equipment is the personal training for their infrastructures is the institution has the institution having proper procedures and operating standards for the personnel to be deployed so on the basis of this acknowledgement the really capacity building is something broader that can encompass different dimensions we have really like besides training taking on different type of interventions so from provision of equipment that it's always in line with the UN standards and the standard that are set at the secretariat level provision of equipment support with infrastructure but also a lot of what we have in the latest institutions is really like advising and working with institutions security institutions and to be ready to deploy the appropriate and well-prepared personnel in the field and what we have seen I know it's not the topic of the session today but one of the elements that we have seen this particularly important into is when we want to include gender equality and equal participation of men and women in peace operations unless we really work with institutions unless we look at infrastructure unless we look at equipment just the provision of training is not sufficient we will have really to take a much more comprehensive look into that so probably this can be the topic for another sort of panel discussion but that's to give you a sense a little bit of the different of the evolution of the program so really from something that was very traditional at the beginning to the recognition of the increased complexity the increased risk I mean the cruise report was a milestone I think for anyone that works in peacekeeping to acknowledge really okay it's no longer only about creating an impact or not we are talking about the life of people so how can we make sure they are prepared for that and what isn't there for the preparation so we have really like looking into all these different dimensions and try to integrate them in a way or another with the different member states to support understanding the probably the mandate of Unitar allows us to have a broader and more comprehensive engagement with member states which is what I was saying at the beginning really the core of everything we do so I think I will stop here but happy to answer again any question that will come up later thank you so much Claudia thank you so much for that introduction and description of the evolution which strikes me from your comments and from what William was saying beyond and broadening the scope of just program planning writ large in peace building there's a lot of conversations that I've had recently about what the US Army War College deemed the VUCA world which stands for a volatile uncertain complex and ambiguous world that we all find ourselves in and meeting those challenges seems to be ever more difficult and we must adapt our training in all these contexts of peacekeeping and peace building more broadly which is perfect to turn to Yaro who's really our practitioner and trainer here and we're so happy to have you I just want to ask you two questions Yaro to start off could you start off by telling us about the primary difficulties that you faced as a peacekeeper and seeing how you try to tackle those with future peacekeepers as you do your training and then secondly could you talk to me about the perspectives and attitudes of your trainees versus yourself when you were yourself a trainee and your colleagues when you were going into training have you seen differences over time in the training sort of environment and perspectives so if you could just open with those two questions it would be great to hear from you Yaro Thank you very much thank you everyone and thank you for having me I'll start by answering questions as well as far as the attitudes of the trainees who trained in the culture the thing that is that the recovery machine has got the opportunity to work with the peacekeepers for my experience I mean from the time when I started with the team and then with the international with the international training peacekeepers so I'm confident and I'm very confident and I can personally say that I have a thought from changing the peacekeepers attitude and thinking in the way the way they think and they ask the mission preparation and the future training so we can look at some positive changes and the positive changes in the attitude because one of them they make their way they have a lot of knowledge about the mission about the field of employment and their life today but compared to us when I was going for the that mission actually I have less information about the where I was going for the mission less information about the mundane and less information about the specific part of where the food is actually that situation so compared to now when you are conducting training in that classroom you can figure out a lot of the field the field within the training sometimes you can conduct the training and share experience among them through the lessons through the lessons through the lessons that you have to conduct today so having this information about the field, the vision area and the mission it's a positive change it's a positive asset and I think all this is because of the training the deployment training I mean provided by many providers like U.S. and U.S. and also national staff because now you have non-national staff in the two constituent countries that are now becoming traders so before the amount of training end up getting ready to deploy they are really ready to go this is a really good asset very good asset for them to see the mission they hit the ground confident and know what they have to do and it's also a positive aspect for the mission because people that hit the ground and they are ready to go so they don't spend a lot of time in the deployment training they don't spend a lot of time hitting them before you deploy them on the ground this is a very good very good aspect of training that's a very positive now related to the difficulty of the training I put many states I can say just two challenges having less information about the mission less information about the the task the specific task before leaving my country and before hitting the mission ground and the second one is actually from family it's written for family the conditional area is the mission area you made your family and then you asked they need 6 to 12 months so it's true that the military you don't support with your family but when you believe for the mission area it's a very specific area so that's usually I need to share the experience of how I can deal with the training and the first one is actually really when you hit the ground if you you are not to have enough in deployment training go to the website read about your mission Monday read any opportunities to be ready and also point to yourself that's what I need and it works and for the family you have to stay as much as you can with your family and from the mission in the mission in to go home I think this is not as good as that any time you have the opportunity to travel and go back any time you can take my credit and say that is your family do it because they are part of the mission actually they are part of you because they support you on the ground so the morale is very good for the family they have the fuel you always have to do your mission it could also look very good for the I mean as I said for the mission aspect so I don't know I'm available that's what I have to share if there is any question any clarification I'm waiting for that thank you very much thank you so much for that experience it does strike me that the conditions of service not like I said I was only short period a few months in Somalia but I was years in Libya and Iraq with the special political mission so we didn't have peacekeepers but we had the UN Guard Unit and they are from troop contributing countries and they are guarding us and they really had hard conditions of service with the long deployments and long times away from their family and I think the thought was that they are military men and they should tough it out but it was tough and I know keeping the morale up is really important so I understand that and it's good to hear that over the time you've seen a positive trajectory for the trainees and that they have been better pre-deployment training better informed and it's really a positive trend William yes sir I just wanted to give you an example and I want to ask something about the pre-deployment training because just last month I was in Uganda conducting training for the battalion ready to go to Somalia and in one of my assessment questions what I have actually what you learned what you didn't know and what you know now one of the trainees told me that this is the first time for her this is the first time for her to hear that the P.O.C. protection of the division is actually beyond physical protection because for her from long time when they are talking about protection of division it's only physical protection of division so you see getting this information before to be deployed is very good it's not taking my only example when I was before I leave my country to Dapu I didn't know that I actually knew when I was in Uganda when I was grown I went through a mission training and I get now more information about the P.O.C. mandate which is Claudia said what is the mission because it's all the time of the day it's the heart of the P.O.C. mandate very interesting very interesting and the mandates are very different one mandate is very different from another as we know in the different missions and William I think that's a good point as I turn to there's these concepts protection of civilians is one they're embedded in international law some of these things are in international humanitarian law some of them are a part of the security council mandates and they at an abstract level to some they make a lot of sense but to a peacekeeper who has to go out into the field and live in the real world circumstances to abide by some of the principles or have to enact the mandate that's been written in an abstract way it must be really hard for trainers to educate and get people prepared you know one of the probably more sensitive subjects and especially with peacekeeping over time especially as we see well since the dawn of war I think unfortunately is that conflict related sexual violence has been you know an atrocity of war for a long time it's hopefully increasingly more recognized as such but never ceases to occur more and more as we see in Sudan today and around the world how do you deal with training in conflict related sexual violence and those issues for peacekeepers when doing these trainings and then more broadly the gender aspects as Yara was mentioning a female peacekeeper so both the contingents are mixed and then also of course dealing with the communities and all of the gendered aspects of peacekeeping how is that approached with your training William yeah thank you for the question primarily I'll start by saying that one of the benefits the way that we've been doing the training is by training smaller groups rather than kind of whole battalions but that's also you know up until now it's been a resource issue and now we have been growing in a sustainability strategy of training more and more civilian trainers and we are on the path to training instructors from these military troop contributing countries to increase the number of training classrooms training basically spaces so that we can maintain the small group by training bigger and bigger portions of the deployed battalion the idea has been that we can really talk about questions of sexual exploitation and abuse and questions of gender without first digging deep again into personal experiences and personal understanding and having an introspective conversation about how we view a gender how we view others in general as people first before being peacekeepers and then once we've had that conversation and we have this through in-depth conversations about you know where is the violence rooted aside from the power dynamic where is it rooted where is that socialization and understanding of gender in these harmful ways that end up creating victims and survivors hopefully in many cases of assault how do they form we talk about social understanding of gender about how these constructs are developed we talk about poverty we talk about exploitation we talk about the profit motives we talk about the general structures that together create these realities and then once we've had those conversations it becomes easier to explain the the why and once place in that dynamic in that equation either as a protector or as hopefully afforded aggressor because the reality is peacekeepers have themselves been involved in sexual exploitation and abuse in many contexts so it has been really interesting for us to observe peacekeepers say things like okay I had heard about zero tolerance policy in the UN I had heard about the necessity to fight sexual exploitation and abuse but I didn't know and this is a few weeks into their training into the pre-deployment training I didn't know that that involved this during a mission I didn't know that this involved not actively pursuing someone I found attractive from the community that understanding of the power dynamic and the complexities of what zero tolerance policy dictates is difficult to achieve without literally developing multiple scenarios that are very nuanced to help them understand even further what is and is not possible what may cause unintended harm and these are very complex conversations this is why it is so important to have these forms of training that Claudia mentioned where you do have that space that ability to transition from instructor led to participant centered training context because these are concepts that make the difference between someone actually being a victim of sexual abuse and assault or trafficking or other and someone actually not experiencing this horrific reality so the time and the dedication that we offer that we dedicate to these conversations by rooting them in the personal by rooting them in very nuanced conversations about power and about gender and about socioeconomic conditions that need to individuals perceiving others as inferior or as targets are important and are you know we dedicate a lot of time to that and I think that's what makes the difference between someone you know just saying oh yeah you and zero tolerance and someone who receives a four or five day training and says yeah I mean I didn't know that it was that nuance I didn't know that that there were degrees to this and I didn't know that it's because I have been conditioned to see things in a certain way to see others in a certain way and I didn't know that I had power because in many cases and I've had the conversation with a peacekeeper about this in Malawi I mean they feel kind of as victims in many situations right the peacekeeper themselves feel that their conditions are not great they are misunderstood by the community there's misinformation about what they're doing there people hate them people are attacking them there's protesters at the door there's you know so much that they forget that at the end when they look at things objectively when they understand the power that they hold in that situation that they still have the responsibility to recognize that in that power dynamic they are the ones with the power and so that's a lot of what the conversations end up revolving around understanding the role as a peacekeeper so that is how we approach this question we try to really really dig into the personal first and the other thing that we as I mentioned earlier briefly around sustainability it is important for us to have former peacekeepers or just civilians from different countries that are contributing troops to be the main trainers and that is the dynamic that we're in right now the strategy is to ensure that these conversations are had between people who understand the same experiences who when they talk about socialization can talk about it in ways that are rooted in the local and personal contexts and that is how the whole curriculum is designed to be a tool in a long term sustainability process for troop contributing countries to really focus on the essential concepts and skills that they need for effective peacekeeping Thank you so much William and Claudia I have another question for you as you know but I would like to see if you have any comments. You raised some of the gendered asterisks before but on the exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers which unfortunately we know of but also their work on trying to protect civilians from conflict related sexual violence. If you have any comments I know we don't have too much time we could dedicate many days to this topic but any other comments you have to add and then I have one other question but I'll just open with that any comments you have to add and then follow up. Thank you well yes I think that we have stated we have to move away from the traditional and that's probably a bit also like the challenge of the United Nations because as I was saying the United Nations has standard training packages and these standard training packages are developed through a process that involved all 193 member states everyone has to agree so you get to a point where the content is quite diluted and where you address some of the topics very much from a superficial level however if we really want to make the difference and that's I think the realization of the United Nations just having a session on sexual exploitation and abusing which we say these you cannot do it these you cannot do it I mean people will be and that's my experience as well when we train and people will say of course mom I mean I do I do know that I cannot do it is this going the fact that I'm telling them you cannot do it is this going to prevent them from doing no and that we see like on a regular basis unfortunately what is important to understand is where this behavior is rooted and as William was saying like this is a big process that requires people really to put themselves somehow in question to put like their the things that they have they believe on or they have been socialized accordingly to put them in question and decides for themselves is this something that I can accept or not and really having this process of questioning is a process takes time and also is a process that requires a lot of sensitivities because you are all going to open up Pandora boxes and the last thing you want to do is really like being perceived as someone they want to brain wash them according to certain standards or whatsoever which is always the risk when you get into this dynamics so it's really like trying to understand where this behavior is rooted but this is all sorts of behavior to change the behavior you need to understand from where the behavior starts and then going and working with that behavior there are behavior that are easier to work with and there are behavior that are less easier to work with because the impact on how I have been socialized culture religion and many many different things that can be very very sensitive but I would say it's something that I'm very like 50% supported with the fact the important role that family is playing in deployment and I'm really really convinced of that having experienced it myself but also like having worked with so many peacekeepers families at the same way that we train the troops prior to deployment there is a space not probably to train the families but to raise the awareness of the families how can they support the people that are deployed how they can really become part of the mission as Yara was saying which can make such a difference because if I know that even if they are not with me and today I mean with technology I mean we are a phone call away from our loved one of course it's not the physical presence I do not agree with that but still really sensitize them all the challenges that the people that are deployed face how can they support that even if it's only from distance how can they help recognizing if there are signs of distress if there are signs of some traumatic events that are impacting on the mental part and I mean these also the United Nations is getting more and more aware of the importance I mean all the discriminants the good part of the ministry that is giving ministerial is here it's going to talk about the importance of mental focus keepers and how who can support them in this process and the discussion around families is fun and it would be really interesting in my perspective also like in this more sensitive sensitive tone it's really hard to involve the families as well because at the end of the day we go back to the sexual and spiritual issues is the consequences of those acts are not only for the individual themselves but something you insist on a lot you're wearing the units when you represent the country but at the same time you're part of the community you're part of the family and everyone will be impacted by that and so really like doing on the one hand this deep work on understanding where they need to come from and really like going much more in the personal dimension but also helping them understanding is not only about that are you ready to lose everything for what you're about to do ask yourself a question before doing it and then if the answer is yes I mean I'm not saying go on that absolutely but I mean it's a different thing but are you really ready to lose everything do you really realize at what point you will lose everything and so really like but having again a professional requires again the involvement probably also of the families and also really safe spaces where people feel comfortable discussing these topics which are extremely uncomfortable topics and not only for this keeper for any absolutely thank you Claudia out of interest of time I'm just going to turn back to Yara before we go to some questions from the audience here but Yara I really want to hear from you about your experience and we've been talking about how it's a tough experience going off and deploying as a peace keeper and you mentioned how we've talked about how it's different from the national service that many peacekeepers are coming from but in your services in the gendarmerie in Burkina Faso and then going off to be a peacekeeper and now as a trainer that sort of your own reflections from that experience have they informed your training and so could you tell us about how you felt I mean you've said the conditions of service but you know what were the things you never imagined when going from being in the gendarmerie to becoming a peacekeeper and how do you bring that into your training and to try to help future peacekeepers in their transition I think you're muted Thank you very much Thank you I mean let's first talk about peacekeeping because it's a very particular word or setting and sometimes you just have to know what I'm talking about you just have to read it and know it I have one of my friends saying that peacekeeping is a word within the word so it's a small word within the word it's an environment where you bring people I mean you bring people from different backgrounds you bring military, police and civilians from different countries different cultures different beliefs, different backgrounds and in a very particular environment peacekeeping environment is a very particular environment it's a conflicted environment a conflicted environment and you bring those people to help people that are also from different backgrounds different stories because the war is starting the vulnerable people all of them are different background history so you bring these people to work together for a very short time so it's a very particular setting a particular story and what really helped me coming back to your questions and you come from National Jamdown to Peacekeeping that was easy because I was training before I got deployed so when I got on the ground and I was I mean learning about the environment the working environment I was confident that to work in such environment we need room we need some value I mean we need some recognition with the community so basically you have to base on some value like integrity like respect for diversity and gender and professionalism you and taking integrity you have to be you have to be you have to live it you have to ask the problem so professionalism you have to live it you have to ask it and you have to do it and more to me about diversity and respect for diversity respect for gender and diversity because you are in that world in this world so those value and you have to they are they are requiring they are much I mean from my country it's in the peacekeeping mission for training and the trainers will criticize you so we lost your audio again it doesn't look like you're muted but we can't hear you give you a second we'll come back to you to finish up if you can't pick it up we're running out of time and I want to get to some of the questions here from the audience so we lost Yaro unfortunately maybe we'll get him back in just a second so I'm just turning to some of our questions here the first one sorry I'm picking between two the first question is about the employment of peacekeeping intelligence as an essential element for peacekeepers to remain safe the question is how are peacekeepers and force commanders trained prior to deployment in gathering and utilizing intelligence and I think we know that some of these missions have these acts and these joint centers for gathering all of the different intelligence it's not intelligence as my understanding is in the way we think of national intelligence services but it is its own form of gathering data compiling it and distributing it to the mission but that's my, I shouldn't have answered the question maybe I'll turn to Claudia or Yaro I might not have heard it, first to Claudia because you heard the question and then Yaro if you have anything to add the question is how peacekeepers receive and deploy the intelligence that they need for their work yeah so since last year actually there is now a full training packages on peacekeeping intelligence so that's something that the United Nations recognizes an essential tool as you say it's not intelligence in the sense that we don't see it for example at the national level national defense forces and so on but it's still very much around the collection of information and the analysis of the information for operational purposes so not only personnel that has this specific role within the unit is being trained but also the commanding officers are being trained because those that have the specific role most of the time are very much in the collection analysis part but then the commanders needs to know how to use those informations to plan command and guide the executions of operations so it's all formalized at the level of the military and it's being formalized for the police as well so it's definitely like an acknowledgement that this is relevant and it's linked them to all the support structures that you have within the mission as well thank you Yaro do you have anything to add in your experience for the need for intelligence the training that you may have received or any training that you're doing on intelligence for peacekeepers not really but within the battalion I think they do have they do deploy human intelligence not like they do have human intelligence personally within the battalions I mean with patrol team in the fields they always join the patrol team because you know and I'm talking about human mission is all about interaction communication and talking so usually we have those intelligent people within the battalion and joining patrol team collecting informations collecting intelligence from previous because usually you have the same can deploy within the same area for many times so they do share intelligence and informations within the battalion to help them work and this is what I know and this is how we we train them when we train the battalion in the country all right thanks thank you so much and I think we only have time for one more question I want you all to try to respond to and go around and start with William because the audience question I think it's something that might be on everyone's mind who would tune into such a conversation I mean we know about some of the problems we're seeing in missions that specifically the peacekeeping mission in Mali the issues with the and even in the Central African Republic Wagner there and the different narratives around the mission and the calls for the mission to leave both from the government but I also think amongst the population we've seen protests so the question is having seen the high profile instances of civilian protests against missions they've mentioned in Mali and also in the DRC and the public hostility that we've seen and it's definitely the case in the DRC what more can be done we've talked about it over the course of this conversation but how can you in missions train peacekeepers to be more responsive and more equipped to deal with the demands of the civilians for accountability yes we've talked about that but also effectiveness what can be done especially in the face of these more transactional alternatives that are out there that are often appealing to governments I once spoke to an interlocutor who were country to remain nameless but they liked Wagner because Wagner fights and Wagner kills the bad guy but we also know what comes along with the package that's the government perspective that's not what this question is about but there is that competition there that is that threat to the peacekeeper missions so I think William we'll start with you what can be done in the face of these high profile issues and what can training can be done to prepare peacekeepers to respond to these issues and I'm going to give this question to everyone Thank you Andrew I would say that at the score this question is about how peacekeepers and communities perceive each other and how they operate together with each other the primary issue that we see is based on what are the expectations from the peacekeeping mission and how they're communicated to civilians and to people in general in the country if the expectation is for the peacekeeping mission to resolve problems that are outside of its or that are beyond its capacity that creates an issue of trust so first of all managing expectations is essential and communication about that targeted communication about that is essential we've seen peacekeepers return and say that the community expected us to deal with everything and to be the ones who respond to every issue medical supplies food access to transportation dealing with infrastructure fighting the people that they perceive as a threat the cause of violence resolving issues around political so the expectations are diverse and managing those expectations I think from the UN peacekeeping force itself at its leadership level but also equipping every single individual on that peacekeeping mission I really think it's every single person including people who do non troop non military work including people who do non police work everybody needs to know exactly what the talking points are around the mission's goals and what it can reasonably achieve in that moment second of all really beefing up the efforts like the ones that USIP and Claudia's team and Unitar do things that really revolve around tools for conflict analysis tools for managing that conflict through mediation and collaborative problem solving the biggest issue is that if you have a community that feels like the peacekeepers just you know close the gate if it gets too you know rough or pull out the guns which thankfully peacekeeping missions are not always putting violence first but that is something that is necessary giving them those tools to equipping them with how to negotiate how to mediate how to resolve an issue without resorting to violence and that is we're trying to do it but what I'm trying to say is more because to be perfectly honest the full battalion is not receiving this training yet and expanding our pool of trainers through our current TOT process and I'm sure that Unitar is also involved in a lot of TOT processes this is going to help us reach more and more of people on that peacekeeping mission to be able to communicate the talking points to be able to communicate reasonably to be able to manage expectations and to be able to say what they can and can't do in a way that doesn't aggravate the issue and finally the last point is just around you know so much right now that the UN is going to be talking about more in-depth I'm sure is misinformation and how to combat that through the technologies that we have and I think the last resort is obviously violence and these are very concrete ways that we can work on this. Thank you so much William and Claudia what are your thoughts? You're on mute. My thoughts are very much along the way of what William was saying I mean when you ask the question the first answer for me is management of expectations and that's I mean I would take it probably not only at the individual level but that's a systemic problem at the UN level so even the UN absolutely like when the people are deployed absolutely they have a responsibility to manage the expectations of the communities but at the same time we need to align the discourses as well. You cannot have at the strategic level a certain discourse that then is not much with what happening on the field so I think that managing expectations at all level from a strategic perspective but also then when you go down to the communities essential the issue of misinformation it's another big thing and you have to understand also that you are intervening in context where you have different power dynamics different interests and the reason for misinformation may be multiple and so also like being aware of that and understanding that part but the other big thing for me like really to avoid these issues is accountability we need to strengthen our accountability mechanism as United Nations it's not only like if something doesn't go in the right direction I think that we need to be we need to really pose for a second and try to understand okay why this is gone so wrong and what is that we are going to do to correct this and showing to the communities that there is an accountability system if something goes wrong is not just to say oh sorry something went wrong I mean we will continue but showing that there is actually there are consequences that people are held accountable that would be really really important to avoid the situations that we have seen you have mentioned Mali I'm very very familiar with the context in Mali and one of the big issues there that has fostered this confrontation of the civilian communities vis-à-vis the mission is around accountability there are things that happen incidents that happen and people that lose their lives for whatever reason at least stop for a moment try to understand why this has happened and if there was a mistake acknowledge there was a mistake we are humans we can do mistakes but acknowledge it have people accountable for it and that's for sure helps in the trusting process if I know that I can do wrong and nothing will happen I mean why then someone should just go along the way that doesn't make any sense we would not do it as individuals I'm not I wonder why we should expect communities where we intervene where we are like fostered where we are fostered by should accept it so for me this management expectation misinformation but also accountability that really important evidence and Yara I'm going to close with you but the same same issue of responding to the protest and dealing with these protests but there's a long question and they've asked for any examples on the African context a continent specifically of when there's been successful training to prepare to respond to civilian needs and I just want to ask your thoughts potentially on these the more involvement of regional bodies in peacekeeping we've seen that in Mozambique today it's not a UN mission it's a episodic mission and you've spoken to the experiences of peacekeepers going back to their countries and being able to train so actually African led regionally focused peacekeeping missions and the training of those peacekeepers can you comment on maybe that dimension and see if that would have any means of sort of responding to these protests and these demands and your thoughts on that Yara. Thank you very much Andrew and going back to what's good Yara said is for the first point which is all about expectation and political strengths in the mission area which has to be deal at the international level at high level strategic level but therefore for the peacekeeper as peacekeeping go on the fields you have to stick on the mandate and be useful for the people you are serving on the ground so we have to train peacekeepers to stick on the mission mandate and deliver what they have to deliver on the ground and the population has to have to see that they are useful for them then they can influence what is happening in the country so that's how we have to actually to train the peacekeepers to be very careful about the political strength within the mission environment you are a peacekeeper on the fields you have to be very careful what is happening in the field as far as the politics issues is concerned and so on so coming back to your question about shifting from UN to African peacekeeping dimensions yes I think is what is happening what's happened first in Darfur the UN start mixing hybrid missions and then Somalia hybrid missions and yes it's good if we have like West African countries like here in West Africa if UN can push our local organization to be very supportive to the peacekeeping missions operating within the region that will be very good but that will bring a positive asset because we have a lot of I love the peacekeepers a lot of experience so that would be very good because one of the challenge of the UN is you bring in people from all the world UN doesn't have any forces so if you have to mobilize maybe people at the regional level that would be very easy and then follow the local I mean the regional or organization to implement that yeah thank you so much that was my observation I was in Nairobi last week and speaking about some with EGAD even here in Washington earlier this week this seems to be the involvement of the regional economic communities in peace and security peacekeeping specifically seems to be a trend and in Mozambique when I spoke to members of the Southern African development community mission in Mozambique and the civilians that were working with them and sort of receiving aid from them in Cabo Delgado it seemed to be a positive trend for now so that that dimension seems to be something positive it's a little bit off the training topic I'm sorry but of course there's training that has to go with that thank you so much William has one last point and then we have to close just a very quick one as we talk about evolution I just wanted to do a little nod make a little nod to the future and with the regional entities and the realities that we're seeing on the African continent is that more and more regional groupings will have to develop to respond not necessarily to human threats but to environmental threats and so I would say that one of the big training elements that are going to be more and more in need as we go forward are how do peacekeeping missions deploy and respond to conflicts that result from environmental crises and challenges and that's where the regional is going to be essential because at that moment in the near future there will be a response that is required that is local and national and regional as people will be displaced and moving around because of these issues so that's just a nod to the future but I'm hoping that Andrew maybe you can convene us again in the future to talk about future needs of peacekeeping on the continent and abroad as well and all over the world where peacekeeping missions exist thank you I would be honored to do that I would be honored to do that I think it is the future and it is now unfortunately we're facing these environmental disasters Yara did you have some last words Yara to close us out anything anything you have to say No I'm good Claudia any final words No I think that the beauty of these conversations is that it actually opens up so many opportunities for follow-up conversations and I think that looking into the future it's definitely what is needed and I mean as you said probably the future is now ready so how can we really be more proactive along that way but I think that's a subject for another time Yes unfortunately we run out of time and we didn't get to all the questions I apologize to our I'm sure massive audience here thank you very much and we'll talk to you later on thank you