The conclusion of the 15-year operation follows a landmark election that resulted in the country’s first transfer of power from one elected president to another in 70 years.  The newly elected President, George Manneh Weah, spoke for many Liberians as he thanked the UN for helping to make that possible.

“In our darkest days, the UN stood with us,” he said in his inaugural address in January.

Mr. Weah, a former football star, won the presidency in a runoff election in December, succeeding Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who had served since 2006.

Speaking at an event last week in the capital, Monrovia, to mark the completion of the peacekeeping mission, known as UNMIL, he pledged that the good work of the UN will not be forgotten. “We will not fight again, we promise you,” he said.

Read further at UN News.

Violence towards women is widespread in Ukraine. Every year, gender-based violence is estimated to cause three times as many deaths as the armed conflict going on in the eastern part of the country since 2014. It is crucial for the OSCE to have a gender perspective in its operations.

The international organization OSCE, comprising 57 participating states, is present with a special mission that monitors the situation and reports about the development; the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM). In the endeavours to reach peace and security the OSCE strives to strengthen women’s participation and leadership.

Read more at Folke Bernadotte Academy’s page.

Leadership in peace-building is one of the Folke Bernadotte Academy’s areas of expertise. The agency deploys Swedish personnel to serve as leaders in international peace operations, and arranges leadership courses and trainings.

– For example the FBA arranged leadership training in the autumn of 2017, for the chiefs of staff from all international UN peace operations while they were gathered in New York. During the large civil-military exercise Viking, to be arranged by the FBA and the Swedish Armed Forces in April 2018, leadership will also be in focus, says Kristina Zetterlund, project manager for the FBA’s activities in the area of leadership.

Read more about FBA’s mission.

“Work to prevent and resolve violent conflicts is needed now more than ever. Our new programme makes the best use of our regional expertise, professional methods and relationships developed over 17 years, drawing on the legacy of Martti Ahtisaari, to build peace worldwide. It has been said that crises are bigger than people, but together we can prove that to be false,” says programme director Ville Brummer.

Read more on the programme here.

The European Union Integrated Approach on Crisis Management Course is conducted within the framework of the Centre of Expertise in Comprehensive Crisis Management (CMC Finland and FINCENT) and under the auspices of the ESDC.

The general objective of the course is to enhance the knowledge and understanding of the EU’s Integrated Approach on crisis management within the EU framework, as well as to increase information sharing, collaboration and cooperation among the different actors, namely military, civilian crisis management, humanitarian and development aid actors in the wider context of CFSP/CSDP.

The course is conducted within the framework of the Centre of Expertise in Comprehensive Crisis Management (CMC Finland and FINCENT) and under the auspices of the ESDC.

Application process will start later in 2018. More information will be available soon.

More info of the course.

Twenty young peacebuilders between 18 and 25 years old from 12 MENA (Middle-East and North-Africa) countries will travel to Amman, Jordan, to attend the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) peace workshop, organized in collaboration with GFP.

From the 18th until the 23rd of February 2018, the participants will analyze conflicts, practice peace tools to build bridges between cultures and religions, as well as design a peace project which they will implement after the training.

About the UNAOC Young Peacebuilders programme

The Young Peacebuilders consists of a series of regional workshops that UNAOC intends to implement in different regions of the world to offer competence development to young people and to grow and strengthen the global movement of young peacebuilders. Through this action, UNAOC is committing to support young people’s participation in peacebuilding with a growing coalition of partners.

Read more about Young Peacebuilders here.

How does the GAP Game development proceed? Check out GAP’s Newsletter for January 2018.

Stories:

• GAP concentrating on end-user focus groups
• GAP presented at the international sociological conference on trust
• Evaluating and improving the gap game
• The gap game as a visual novel
• Welcome to the Game World

You can also subscribe the GAP newsletter at bottom of the page here.

With United Nations ‘blue helmets’ facing increasingly grave threats, including armed groups with no interest in peace, the UN peacekeeping chief called on Wednesday for greater political engagement and leadership from the Security Council and the world body’s Member countries to ensure UN troops – and the populations they serve – are better protected.

“We are being attacked by the armed groups who are looting, killing, raping and they have no interest in peaceful solution,” Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, told reporters in New York at a briefing on a new report on reducing casualties among UN peacekeepers.

Read more at UN website.

As part of United Nations Alliance of Civilizations’ (UNAOC) Media and Information Literacy initiatives, UNAOC has been developing a series of projects aiming at the use of ICT, gamified apps, and videogaming platforms as strategic ways of building peaceful understanding among individuals from different cultural and religious backgrounds.

Check out the projects at UNAOC PEACEapp website.

Improving the Effectiveness of Capabilities in EU Conflict Prevention (IECEU) -project launched a new learning application on European Union’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions.

The learning environment introduces you to eight selected case studies related to European Union’s crisis management covered by the IECEU project.

After completing these lessons, you will have obtained a basic understanding of the EU processes and institutions which are involved in planning and implementing EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy  missions. Additionally, you will gain understanding of essential concepts and topics related to crisis prevention and crisis management including: comprehensive security, security sector reform (SSR), mentoring, monitoring and advising, and local ownership.

The application can be accessed here.

Please, leave also feedback concerning the application.