Panel Discussions - Monday, November 29, 2010
IPI Hosts Launch of Joint IPI-PPC "Being a Peacekeeper" Series
The International Peace Institute, in partnership with the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre (PPC), has just begun a series of events to bring together existing, emerging, and potential troop- and police-contributing countries in an informal setting to allow for an open and candid exchange of experiences.
The first meeting in the series, called Being a Peacekeeper: The Challenges and Opportunities of 21st Century Peace Operations, was a two-day roundtable in New York on November 29-30, 2010.
One purpose of the series is providing a forum to help facilitate outreach from the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) to contributors and help formulate policy development within the UN Secretariat.
The roundtable, co-sponsored by the government of Morocco, began with a discussion of current trends in peacekeeping. Participants focused on themes of burden-sharing, expectation-management, and the need for diplomats and UN officials in New York to gain first-hand knowledge of the field.
The panel that followed provided an opportunity for discussing the barriers facing and motivations of countries who contribute to UN peacekeeping. Participants touched on the topic of consultations between the Security Council and troop-contributing countries during the mandate-drafting and mandate-renewal processes. To this end, there was strong support for reforming the process of mandate adoption to ensure greater involvement of those who contribute troops and police to these missions.
The second half of the roundtable covered capacity-building, training, and Secretariat support to contributing countries. Participants stressed the importance of baseline standards in training and the need for a sustainable effort to prepare trainers to bridge quality and quantity gaps in the field. Participants also discussed how the Department of Field Support could better manage the full deployment cycle, particularly the start-up and drawdown phases, and the need to provide mission-specific, as opposed to generic, guidelines.
Some participants focused on a perceived shortfall in support for small and new troop- and police- contributing countries. Member-state representatives and representatives of the Secretariat agreed on the importance of increasing the participation of female police officers in UN field missions, which may involve overcoming legislative barriers in some countries.
Future meetings, both in New York and at the regional level, will provide space for more discussions among troop- and police-contributing countries in 2011.
The Global Observatory
Interview with John Prendergast, Co-Founder, Enough Project
Mr. Prendergast discusses the international justice system and the new ground forged by Invisible Children's Kony2012 campaign.
Key Global Events to Watch in May
A list of key upcoming meetings and events with implications for global affairs.
The Global Observatory is a new website by IPI, providing timely analysis on peace and security issues, interviews with leading policymakers, interactive maps, and more.
Recent Events
May 10, 2012
Arbour: What the Rule of Law Means
“In my understanding of the rule of law, fundamentally, what the rule of law means is that it embraces the principle of equality before the law,” Louise Arbour, president of the International Crisis Group (ICG), told an IPI audience on May 10, 2012. Ms. Arbour outlined that this means that no one is above the law and everyone has both equal protection and equal benefit of the law. 
May 03, 2012
Shachtman: Cyber Threats Akin to South Bronx, Not Pearl Harbor
“There’s not a danger of a cyber Pearl Harbor… it’s more like the South Bronx circa 1999, where there’s a danger that it becomes such a tough neighborhood that no one wants to set up shop there and people move out,” Noah Shachtman, editor of the Danger Room blog at Wired magazine and non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution, told an IPI audience at a panel on cyber security on May 3, 2011.
April 27, 2012
Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems
An April 27th roundtable discussion at IPI titled “Preventing Conflicts in Africa: The Role of Early Warning and Response Systems” examined the progress, prospects and challenges of regional and international early warning and response mechanisms to monitor, anticipate, and mitigate potential conflict situations in Africa.