Anne Flaspöler, UNU-GEST Researcher's new blog post "Peacekeeping Training: Torn Between Complexity and Time" for UNU-MERIT.
Dr. Anne Flaspöler is an Affiliated Researcher at UNU-GEST and the EDDA Center at the University of Iceland (PhD in Politics and International Studies by the University of Leeds, UK, 2015). Anne's research interests include peacekeeping training and its socialisation properties, liberal peacebuilding as well as African peace and security efforts. She has conducted fieldwork in Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Rwanda.
Anne represented UNU-GEST in the Future Force Conference 2017 in the Netherlands in February 2017. You can see her contributions here.
In her blog post published in the "Challenges to Peacekeeping in the 21st Century" Blog Series by UNU-MERIT, Anne reflects on several practical aspects of Peacekeeping training, more concretely about the UN Core Pre-Deployment Training Materials and it's challenges towards its application on the field. In her article, Anne advocates for a more realistic approach that offers balance between time investment and training impact as "skills need to fulfil international expectations of peacekeepers – and what they are meant to achieve – and go far beyond a simple introduction of all participants to the same basic level of understanding", she states. Therefore, she suggests that investment in training for peacekepers needs to be increased as well as the scope of subjects.
However, "even if more extensive training is recommended, it has to be kept in mind that peacekeepers are generally deployed for a year with the potential of extension", she states. Hence, Anne suggests to reflect on the importance of the time and resources available for peackeepers to put in place their skills on the ground, "the tasks peacekeepers are faced with and the limited time of peacekeepers’ deployment, the question remains – how much time is investing enough time in training?", she asks.
For further reference see the Blog post here: http://www.merit.unu.edu/peacekeeping-training-torn-between-complexity-and-time/
See more about Anne Flaspöler and her Peacekeeping Training and Gender offered at UNU-GEST.