Displaying items by tag: Personnel management

About the course The training covers essential methodologies of evaluation and applies them to conflict intervention, peace-building, and recovery initiatives. We cover challenges such as rudimentary plans, lack of information and complex implementation structures. 

CSDi is announcing the launch of a diploma module of eight online Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), Community Based Adaptation (CBA) & Rural Development field courses. These courses begin by introducing basic climate change concepts, and develop as participants identify local community vulnerabilities, identify climate change risks and hazards, investigate appropriate solutions, develop full projects, launch and manage them. A strong course component is the integration of DRR and CBA within course participant’s traditional development projects.

This SiND Security Fact Sheet for Humanitarian Agencies describes shifting patterns in security incidents for aid actors from 1996 to 2010. It asks whether a ‘risk transfer’, from UN and Red Cross agencies to INGOs and from International to national staff, really has taken place.  The fact sheet can be viewed here.

This five-day intensive course will enable participants to identify the key requirements for managing security in complex emergencies and conflict zones by practicing essential techniques in risk management, security assessment and crisis response.The course draws on field case studies, the current humanitarian environment and the security management practices used by humanitarian bodies internationally.

Numerous evaluations have highlighted the poor engagement of national and local NGOs within clusters, listing practical concerns such as language, staffing and logistics barriers, but often without a thorough analysis of why national NGOs do not engage, or what their motivations are when they do. Two questions arise. If we focus on the motivating forces behind engagement, can we build better cluster relations with national NGO partners? And by creating a prescriptive format of participation, such as the cluster approach, have we actually created a barrier to true partnership? My research on cluster partner national NGOs from Somalia, Zimbabwe, Myanmar…

Core to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)’s approach to assistance is sending international staff into foreign contexts to work with, and usually direct, locally recruited national staff. Outsiders bring experience, leadership and technical skills, and are in a better position to ‘witness’ intolerable situations and speak out about them. International staff are also better able to resist local pressures for resource diversion, giving MSF greater confidence that donor money is being spent appropriately. For many within and outside MSF, this model is the only responsible option because the compromises assumed to be inherent in a remotely managed programme are unacceptable. MSF-Operational…

The British military has faced a range of challenges when engaging with non-military actors in ‘population-centred’ counter-insurgency and stabilisation operations. Such actors include humanitarian agencies, non-government organisations, civilian populations and national and international government institutions. There has been considerable resistance, especially from the British Army, to processes that have the potential to undermine traditional military combat skills. Managing the interface with civilian organisations is the task of the tri-service British Military Stabilisation Support Group (MSSG), formerly the Joint Civil Military Cooperation Group. Members of the MSSG must learn and then embody a new set of rules and cultural codes that…

With an annual budget of $650 billion and over two million military and civilian personnel, the US Department of Defense is the largest institution in the world. Since September 2001, its primary focus has been the ‘global war on terror’, a war of avowedly unlimited scope and duration. Its critical components include counter-insurgency and stabilisation operations, which have increasingly involved the US military in relief and development activities. NGOs have struggled to develop a unified response to the growing scope and pace of US military involvement in areas normally reserved for civilian leadership and action. Although regular dialogue has been…

The special feature of this edition of Humanitarian Exchange, co-edited with Victoria Metcalfe, focuses on issues related to humanitarian civil– military coordination. In the leading article, Simone Haysom sets out the rationale for civil–military coordination, and the challenges involved in establishing effective relations between humanitarian actors and the military. In their article, Jenny McAvoy and Joel R. Charny argue that NGOs must continue to invest in dialogue to address new challenges arising from the US military’s expanding presence in increasingly diverse contexts and roles. Heiko Herkel, from the Civil–Military Co-operation Centre of Excellence (CCOE), makes the case for the continued…

The increase in violent conflict in the post cold war era has highlighted the need for a comprehensive, multifunctional approach to conflict management. The main characteristics of conflict today are its intrastate nature and the role of civilians as both perpetrators and victims of violent conflict. Interventions aimed at meaningful peace have to include a broad range of diverse activities that are aimed, amongst others, at demobilisation (often including child soldiers), finding a new commonly accepted state system, re-engineering most state functions such as the criminal justice system, and socioeconomic development. The result is that modern peacekeeping missions include a wide range of civilian personnel who are responsible for such diverse activities as…