Home 2018

GAP in NATO Science for Peace and Security Information Day

On November 22, 2018, representatives of the scientific world, diplomats and defence experts from over 50 countries met to discuss international cooperation in the framework of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Information Day that was organized at the War Studies University in Warsaw. The program this year celebrates the 60th anniversary. The last decade of its activity consists of almost 800 joint actions among 29 Member States and 41 partner countries – from the cyber defence in Jordan to humanitarian de-mining in Ukraine.

NATO program “Science for Peace and Security” (…) is to be a platform for dialogue between various expert and scientific environments and it will bring tangible benefits in the form of interesting and innovative products that may interested North Atlantic Alliance. It is difficult to provide a better context for similar discussions than a meeting at the War Studies University. University which is a natural environment for both, scientists and officers, who deal with security issues in their various dimensions and aspects on a daily basis.
… said, welcoming the participants, rector-commandant of the War Studies University – Brigadier General, PhD Eng. Ryszard Parafianowicz

It was a perfect opportunity to be able to discuss our project and show it to specialists from the environment of scientific and economic entities, mainly related to the area of security and defence (military and civil research institutes, scientific institutions, military universities, companies associated with the Polish Armaments Group). GAP representatives also presented the results of research conducted authorships Dr Valentina Trzcińska and Kamil Kuć M.A. on the preparation for foreign missions by the Polish Police and the participation and preparation of other police and military contingents. The discussed issues of soft skills such as cooperation, communication and trust have been described in detail as the three most important pillars of work during the foreign mission. Multiple comparisons to family or everyday life have made it easier for listeners to understand why these soft skills are so important on a mission and during of the training. A small visualization and moving it to the level of the mission was enough to recognize these skills as the most important and the listeners stated that there should be a strong emphasis on these skills during the training.

GAP Newsletter: User Experiences of GAP Soft Skills Game

In this Newsletter, the end users describes their user experiences when playing and testing the game in practice. Also it explains more about The Soft Skills in Peacebuilding Summit to be organised in Dublin (Ireland) in January 2019. Read more in our Newsletter: GAP Newsletter Dec 2018

The GAP Game already exists with promising capacities to teach and learn soft skills in the peacebuilding context. Now soft skills training and assessment is possible through a role-playing computer game. The past months our project experts and researchers have facilitated the evaluation of the GAP application’s constituent components in order to ensure that the game’s operational, educational, technical and specialist content is robust and relevant to end users in operational context. The community of end users critically assessed the content and usability of GAP Game, visit here for more details.

Visualisation of GAP Soft Skills Game:

                  

 

GAP and Future Security Challenges

On 18 and 19 October, GAP crew presented recent project developments at the International Society of Military Sciences „Military Sciences and Future Security Challenges” international conference was organized by the National Security Department, with the participation of the entire university and members of ISMS. International Society of Military Sciences is an association that brings together military universities such as: Austrian National Defence Academy, Baltic Defence College, Royal Military College of Canada, Royal Danish Defence College, Finnish National Defence University, Netherlands Defence Academy, Norwegian Defence University College, Royal Military Academy of Belgium and War Studies University to exchange their observations and research results, and pursue that in military sciences it is not just about technology, techniques and procedures, because all conflicts concern people first and foremost and the military is not separated from the society.

During this jubilee conference, since the Association celebrated its tenth anniversary, the opening of the conference had a very festive character, due to the participation of all Rectors – Commandants of the universities who are members of the association. During this conference, where apart from celebrating the decade of existence of the association, there was ample time and place for debate and exchange of ideas. The most important thing was to find the answer to two very important questions: “What should be the balance of our efforts in the military profession, between transforming military science to serve prevention and management, and maximizing capacity for winning wars?” and “What do defence universities have to do to fulfill their responsibilities to society and the international community as custodians of the military sciences?” The participants could find answers to these two questions during speeches in 9 working groups. The participants were able to hear about 70 lectures during these two productive days delivered by international speakers from around the world.

During lectures in one of the panels, Security Education, Dr. Kamila Trochowska presented a speech on “Soft Skills for Security and Defense: Cross-Cultural Competence and Beyond”, which was devoted to the Gaming for Peace project’s 3C aspects. Moreover, the participants had the chance to further discuss GAP developments at the series of posters by Prof. Anne Holohan, Dr. Kamila Trochowska and Kamil Kuć. The “GAP: The Proteus effect in action” poster explained the 101 of the project, “Soft Skills and the Polish Police – interviews results” which summarized the results of research carried out by Dr Walentyna Trzcińska and MA Kamil Kuć about preparation for foreign missions in the Polish Police, and “GAP and Cross-Cultural Competence” expanded on operationalization of culture for CPPB purposes and the game itself.

The presentations received a truly positive feedback from our potential and future end-users. As one of te experienced military participants put it: “The world is changing, technology goes along. We must use the maximum of this technology be able to end conflicts faster. I believe that if this game fulfils its mission, we will witness progress in people, too”.

ESDC pilot course on Improving Performance in the CSDP Missions, 7-9 January 2019 in Dublin

The course aims to increase the performance of future mission personnel when communicating and cooperating in a stressful environment, taking into account cultural diversity and gender aspects, and thus to enhance the effectiveness of the CSDP Missions and Operations as part of the EU Integrated Approach. The course is designed to ensure that deploying personnel are equipped with the necessary knowledge of the soft skills needed in the mission environment. For an explanatory video on the matter, visit our Youtube channel where you can find much more resources, all of which received promotion from pistachioconsulting.com for greater visibility.

The training programme builds on the skills identified by the GAP project as relevant for conflict prevention and peace building (CPPB) personnel, and delivered in a digital role-playing game, with assessment. The residential part includes playing the role-playing 2D computer game as well as individual assessment and group work – as described in the course programme. Participants will also have the opportunity to network, share views and perspectives with one another and with professionals in the field of CSDP.

Please read more from the official invitation here: GAP Course on “Improving Performance” Invitation

UN: Strengthening peacekeeping requires collective action

Highlighting complex and evolving challenges, the head of UN peacekeeping on Wednesday called for heightened vigilance and a more robust response to existential threats against both peacekeepers and those they strive to defend.

“Improving peacekeeping is, by its very essence, a collective endeavour,” Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, told the Security Council on Wednesday.

“Ensuring that our missions are fit for purpose and perform well, requires action by all of us and all of us working together,” he added, noting the role of the UN Secretariat, Member States, countries which contribute personnel, host nations and regional organizations.

In his briefing, Mr. Lacroix outlined steps taken by the Organization and the results these have yielded. One of the key areas includes assessing peacekeepers’ performance.

 

Read more at UN Website

Preparations for GAP game’s final evaluation on their way

On 21st August, 25 representatives of the GAP partner organisations gathered in TCD to prepare for the final evaluation of the GAP game. Everyone had been sent the game a few days earlier so that they could play through the whole story.

Prof Anne Holohan, the PI of the project, introduced the plan of evaluation workshops and discussed the PowerPoint slides that will be shown by trainers, as well as the forms needed for evaluation. There were lots of useful comments from the participants that we will be taking into account when finalising the preparations. Next Anne and Mascia Toussaint from Enquirya introduced the pre-game quiz and everyone had a chance to try a section of it on the iPads or laptops.

After the break, Mads Haahr from Haunted Planets demonstrated how to play the game, stressing all the important issues like the user ID, differentness modes, pausing and saving the game and accessing the assessment results. This led on to the presentation by a representative of Adapt and a special consultant for Fully-Verified. He explained the in-game assessment and how to read the result. Later we discussed the post-game quiz and the trainer’s manual and eventually the interview questions that will end the evaluation workshop.

It was a busy, but very informative day with an excellent contribution from everyone who participated. We have made a note of all the comments and suggestions and these will feed into the final evaluation.

So where do we go from here?

The GAP team will be travelling to Portugal, Bulgaria, Poland, Finland, Northern Ireland and will finish in Dublin. In each location there will be 10 young police or military, who haven’t been deployed and two trainers taking part in the workshop. We will follow the schedule from the training day with the introduction, pre-game quiz, playing through the game, post-game quiz, discussion and interviews.

We are looking forward to testing the GAP game, which is the impressive result of two years’ work of the whole GAP Consortium, with contributions from end-users!

“United Nations peacekeeping and internal legitimacy” by Sarah von Billerbeck

All talk and no action or no action without talk? Peacekeeping will struggle to be successful if it is not viewed as legitimate by host country populations, donors, troop contributing countries and other beneficiaries. But it will equally struggle to be successful if it is not viewed as legitimate by DPKO staff themselves.

When I worked for the United Nations peacekeeping operation in Congo – MONUC at the time – I once hosted a local politician for a meeting. As we walked to my office, he commented on the many posters lining the corridor celebrating the bravery and sacrifice of UN troops and the accomplishments of the mission – for example, the number of police officers trained or ex-combatants demobilised. He noted that these weren’t put up for the benefit of outsiders: they were in a restricted part of the building and were therefore clearly aimed at the UN staff who passed them every day.

I had never really noticed this ‘self-celebration’ before, this internally-directed ‘advertising’ of the good work of UN peacekeeping personnel and of the legitimacy of our efforts for peace. For the first time, it struck me as something relatively widespread in peace operations as well as something entirely lacking in studies of peacekeeping and legitimacy. Now an academic who researches the UN, I’ve undertaken a large-scale study across three international organisations (the UN, NATO and the World Bank), conducting nearly 90 detailed staff interviews to find out why, when, and how these staff seek to build and maintain legitimacy not for others, but for themselves.

Read an article by Sarah von Billerbeck from University of Reading at Dag Hammarskjöd Foundations home page.

Apply for conference on Developing The Future of Education, October 30-31 2018, Abu Dhabi

The UAE 2021 National Agenda aims to develop a world-class education system. There have been a series of initiatives by the Government to raise standards in education that includes aspirations for citizenship, raised educational attainment, a knowledge-based economy driven by innovation, research, science, technology and an education system above international standards.

The overall improvement in the educational world will only happen with strong synchronization of all stakeholders involved who are all working towards a common goal.

Register to EU – CIVCAP final conference on 12th September in Brussels

EU-CIVCAP final conference
Improving EU capabilities for conflict prevention and peacebuilding: Mapping lessons, best practices, and policy opportunities
September 12 th, 2018
CEPS, Place du Congrès 1, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium

 

The final conference of the Horizon 2020 project EU-CIVCAP serves to showcase the key lessons and best practices identified in the project’s research and the relevance of its main findings for policy-makers and practitioners in EU conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

The discussion in the three thematic panels will serve to articulate policy implications and test the practicalities of implementing the project’s main recommendations to improve EU capabilities for conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The conference will also map relevant ongoing policy processes in the context of the implementation of the EU Global Strategy, in particular, current discussions about the Global Civilian Compact, the Joint Communication on resilience, the integrated approach to conflicts and crises, and the MFF negotiations.

 

More information at the conference website.