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Skills for Multiagency Responses to International Crises
Skills for Multiagency Responses to International Crises
Skills for Multiagency Responses to International Crises
Skills for Multiagency Responses to International Crises
Skills for Multiagency Responses to International Crises
Australian Civil-Military CentreAustralian responses to international, complex emergencies and humanitarian crises, generated by natural disaster, conflicts or incidents, demand the coordinated responses of multiple civil-military-police actors and agencies. A scoping study of Australian government agency training needs in the latter half of 2013 indicated that stakeholder agencies continue to have difficulty in identifying and developing individual skills to enable people to operate effectively in a high-pressure crisis environment that requires an integrated civil-military-police response. Agencies highlighted the need to develop a ‘whole-of-government’ set of skills for civil-military-police interaction that would complement agency specific skills. In 2015, the Australian Civil-Military Centre (ACMC) commissioned Sustineo to undertake a project to address this gap. This report, based on Sustineo’s research and consultations, goes some way to identifying the skills needed for effective civil-military-police interaction. However, the list is not exhaustive. In fact, the report highlights the difficulty of articulating a specific set of multiagency, cross-cutting skills for civil-military-police interaction. Practitioners gave consistent advice that specific skills were less important than other factors in successful civil-military-police interaction. Skills and training are only one component of success. The factors that can facilitate and enhance civil-military-police interaction and the strategies required to address those factors are much broader. The report highlights some of these broader factors and how they interrelate. It identifies the interdependence of individual knowledge, skills and attributes, the value of building relationships, the importance of tolerance and understandings of difference and the need for trust and credibility. The report concludes that an individual’s ability to operate effectively in a civil-military-police environment is developed both prior to and during a mission or deployment and relates more to the type of person and their relationships than to specific skills. Generic skills and attributes for effective civil-military-police interaction •Common and shared goals •Situational awareness •Understanding of whole-of-government •Personal attributes such as flexibility, resilience and working in a team •Professional skills, such as negotiation, mediation, conflict management and partnership brokering •Existing professional relationships and networks •Trust •Self-awareness (and social and emotional intelligence) •Tolerance of diversity (including of organisational differences and cultural diversity). The report identifies considerations for developing people for deployments and it is hoped that these will inform agencies’ training and development strategies. The findings support the ongoing work that the ACMC is undertaking to develop an Australian Government Preparedness Framework (the Framework). The Framework will draw together several streams of work that are interrelated, including this report, to further build Australia’s whole-of-government effectiveness in responding to disasters and complex emergencies overseas.
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The Australian Government’s Guiding Principles for Civil-Military-Police Interaction in International Disaster and Conflict Management (the Guiding Principles) has been developed by the Australian Civil-Military Centre (ACMC) in collaboration with the departments of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), Defence (ADF), Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and Attorney-General’s (AGD), the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID). The Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Treasury have also reviewed and contributed to the Guiding Principles.
Decades of peace operations, stabilisation efforts and disaster relief have resulted in widespread agreement about the civil‑military imperative in international responses to natural disasters, armed conflict and complex emergencies: to be effective, traditionally unconnected participants must now more often work in coordinated partnerships. Progress is being made to develop comprehensive, integrated approaches at both the national (‘whole-of-government’) and the international (‘whole-of-system’) levels. But there are still questions remaining such as: what next for civil‑military effectiveness? What are the primary civil‑military capabilities? What capabilities will be required in future conflicts and disasters? Where should policy makers, force developers, planners, practitioners and analysts focus their attention in the years to come? To examine these questions and advance this important discussion, the Australian Civil‑Military Centre hosted the third annual Civil‑Military Interaction Seminar at Walsh Bay, Sydney from 7 to 10 November 2011.1 Framed by the theme ‘Civil‑Military Effectiveness: building tomorrow’s capabilities’, the aim of the seminar was to highlight current trends in civil‑military practice and discuss future needs in seeking to avert, mitigate and respond to conflicts and disasters.
In response to overseas natural or man-made disasters and complex emergencies, the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police, Australian Government agencies and the aid community often find themselves operating in the same physical space as one another. Unfortunately, a lack of understanding and confusion over stakeholder roles, responsibilities, cultures and terminologies can impede communication and coherency in program implementation, leading to reduced effectiveness in meeting the needs of the host population. Issues—such as shrinkage of humanitarian space due to restrictions on humanitarian access; perceptions regarding subordination of humanitarian principles; the tensions that arise between political, humanitarian and military objectives within integrated multi-agency stabilisation efforts; and the increase in the number of organisations and individuals operating in these environments—all serve to add a degree of confusion and potential for discord. However, experience has shown that improved mutual understanding of the roles, mandates, principles, cultures and objectives of the various civil-military stakeholders enhances constructive engagement, dialogue and communication both prior to and during deployments. With this dialogue and communication comes greater opportunity to achieve maximum benefits for people and nations affected by natural disasters and conflict. To this end, the Australian Civil-Military Centre and the Australian Council for International Development—in collaboration with the Australian Defence Force, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Agency for International Development, Australian non-government organisations, and the Australian Red Cross—have developed this document, Same Space—Different Mandates. Building and expanding upon a UK Ministry of Defence document, Same Space—Different Mandates aims to improve the collective understanding of civil-military stakeholders responding to international natural disasters and complex emergencies and, in doing so, to create greater opportunity for constructive engagement amongst them. It is our hope that this document will influence policy and become a useful educational tool to support all stakeholders engaged in disaster and conflict response, as well as help inform better field practices through improved collective dialogue, communication and interaction.
Armed conflicts and natural disasters are inherently gendered crises; they can affect women, men, girls and boys in profoundly different ways. It is increasingly accepted that understanding these differences—or adopting a gender perspective—improves the effectiveness of responses to these crises, as well as the efforts of policy-making, advocacy, research and training institutions that focus on them. A gender perspective is more frequently recognised as a core requirement for all personnel involved in these efforts. However, there are many who are expected to engage with gender issues, yet remain unfamiliar with them. For this audience, there is a dearth of literature that provides an introductory overview of gender issues in crisis environments. This paper is intended to be an educational and awareness-raising resource for those who are beginning to engage with gender issues in crisis environments, whether they are civilian, military or police. It examines gender dimensions commonly observed in conflict and disaster environments, such as differences in casualty trends, risks, threats, vulnerabilities, needs, opportunities and stresses. It provides examples of the operational benefits of a gender perspective and the harmful consequences resulting from the absence of a gender perspective.
The civil-military-police community is as diverse as it is broad. It contains a wide range of actors who employ a variety of methodologies and techniques, use unique equipment and often pursue different objectives in service of different masters. Diversity is a strength of the civil-military-police domain, although a common understanding is required between community members to realise that strength. The range of different terminology employed across the civil-military-police community can make it difficult to form a common understanding. Strategic level decision making should be driven by shared information and understandings. A Civil-Military-Police Language Guide can help ensure that information sourced from the operational level is precise, consistent and unambiguous. The demand for these qualities increases during crises.
Since 1999, Australia has increasingly deployed the military in joint, combined, interagency environments as part of a ‘whole-of-government’ approach. Despite some successes, a number of barriers between the contributing agencies continue to interfere with attempts to synchronise disparate elements of national power into a unified national effort. The paper examines these barriers through the lens of Australian operations in Timor-Leste, the Solomon Islands and Afghanistan to determine how these barriers can be overcome and strives to broaden institutional perspective for members of the civil-military-police community. The paper concludes that incompatible organisational culture is the most significant impediment to Australia’s whole-of-government approach but argues that some differences in organisational culture provide the whole-of-government approach with its greatest strength. Differences in organisational perspective offer diversity in thinking, challenges the status quo, prevents group-think and leads to superior outcomes. By raising awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of different organisational cultures in interagency operations, practitioners and planners will be better placed to overcome the impediment of different organisational cultures and instead leverage them to better synchronise the application of the national power.
Historically, international humanitarian law (IHL) through the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 has required the protection of civilian populations in armed conflict. The Geneva Conventions provide guidance with regard to the obligations of states and parties to a conflict to apply the principle of distinction and to ensure precaution in attack as they pursue their military objectives. This was the first international legal framework to provide for the protection of civilians and forms the foundation of the ‘Protection of Civilians’ concept. Throughout the 1990s, devastating failures to protect civilians from violence and atrocities shaped thinking at the United Nations (UN) and gave rise to a more expansive concept of Protection of Civilians, incorporating international human rights law, international refugee law, and including best practices in peacekeeping operations and humanitarian response. This is reflected in the adoption of Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict as a thematic concern of the UN Security Council, and the development of policy and guidance relating to civilian protection since 1999, at the United Nations and elsewhere. The term ‘Protection of Civilians’ has expanded from a set of legal obligations in IHL to a conceptual and operational framework used by multiple ‘protection actors’ and practitioners—military and civilian, political and humanitarian. The concept of Protection of Civilians has developed in response to conflicts and crises as they emerged and as a result has developed unevenly. Combined with the fact that there is no operational definition of Protection of Civilians, there is a perception among protection practitioners that different actors involved in providing protection to people caught up in crisis understand and implement the concept differently. This perception raised questions among the researchers as to whether different understandings actually exist, and if so what the implications for the implementation of civilian protection might be. This gave rise to a research project titled In Search of Common Ground – Understanding Civilian Protection Language and Practice for Civil and Military Practitioners.
In the twenty years since the end of the Cold War, Australian not-for-profits (NFPs) have found a range of ways to support societies manage transitions from warfighting postures to modes of peaceful coexistence, and from military governments to civilian-led democracies. In managing the transitions, these societies have relied heavily on the expertise and relative neutrality of national and international civil society organisations. These organisations have helped national political and military leaders find and return to a path of reconciling former combatants and enemies, and deciding how to re‑establish viable security institutions that respond to civilian control and enjoy sufficient public trust. Very little information has been collected to understand the nature and scope of these experiences, however, so in 2013 the Australian Government tasked the Australian Civil-Military Centre (ACMC) to commission a survey of Australian NFP work in support of security sector reform (SSR). Specifically, SSR is understood to be a concept that ‘evolved over the last two decades to describe a range of efforts to improve the security of a state and its citizens, through an effective, affordable, accountable and transparent security sector. In all cases, but particularly for conflict-affected states, SSR is about the governance of the security sector.’ Conducted in partnership with the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID), the hypothesis has been that while SSR is central to any political process in societies emerging from conflict, it is a difficult space for Australian NFPs to work in. Some NFPs choose not to work on these issues, and others who do find many roadblocks. Early interviews identified that the NFP SSR-related activities are likely to be concealed behind other humanitarian or development language, can be isolated from larger political engagement and peace processes, can be very difficult to find funding for, and policy makers and practitioners are uncertain of its impact. Seeking to identify who is doing what where, and to understand some of the risks and opportunities they confront, the author approached the research from several angles: •17 Australian NFPs completed an online survey that asked about SSR and about four cases: Afghanistan, Solomon Islands, South Sudan and Timor-Leste •46 Australian and international experts were interviewed •25 participants attended a workshop to debate the interim findings of the research in Canberra in December 2013 •additional NFP case studies were subsequently commissioned and included in this report.
This report examines the governmental organizational structures used in three Australian-led interventions in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the Southwest Pacific regions: Bougainville, East Timor, and the Solomon Islands. Whole-of-government efforts requiring coordination across many parts of the Australian Government characterized each of these unique operations, in which different organisational approaches were used to manage the participation of various agencies. During the course of the research, it became apparent that, over time, numerous lessons were learned as branches of the Australian Government gained experience in how best to interact with one another and manage complex operations of this type. The report describes the key Australian agencies that participated in the three operations, the coordinating mechanisms they adopted, and the specific roles they played. In addition to providing insights that should be useful for the preparation and conduct of operations outside Australia, the information in this report also should be useful in terms of better whole-of-government operations inside Australian territory.
The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has come a long way in understanding the importance of gender diversity to our organisation. We recognise that our future defence capability will depend on recruiting the best people from all sectors of society. Women represent over 50 per cent of Australia’s population and we need to tap more effectively into this talent pool. Initiatives over the past two decades have seen an increasingly successful integration of women into the three services. More recently, there has been a concerted effort to incorporate gender considerations into policies, training, planning and on operations. The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has been a critical guide in this learning process. I, and the ADF senior leaders, strongly support the Defence Implementation Plan (DIP), part of the Australian National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2012–2018. We are committed to fully integrating women and gender considerations into the ADF. New policies and programs and senior leadership efforts are not enough to bring about the deep cultural change that is needed. The change we seek is not just about employing more women. We need to normalise WPS and incorporate its principle into our everyday decision making. In order to achieve this, all members of the ADF and those we work with in Defence need to understand WPS principles. This publication aims to move past the theoretical by drawing together the real-life experiences, reflections and lessons of male leaders—from the ADF, the Australian Federal Police and civilians. The publication was developed as a means to demonstrate, through practical example, how WPS can be incorporated into military or organisational planning to improve operational outcomes and achieve mission objectives. It demonstrates how good leadership is predicated on creative, responsive and inclusive thinking, and an ability to accept new ways of seeing the world. I expect the publication will become a useful tool for those who seek to understand why we need to broaden our thinking within the ADF and to help us change the way we do business. WPS may be only one element of an evolving global landscape, but it is a most important one. By embracing WPS and its principles the ADF will continue to develop its capability and, importantly, will ensure we are better positioned to more effectively help the people and communities we serve.
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2010 •
The Oxford Handbook of the Responsibility to Protect. Edited by Alex Bellamy and Tim Dunne
The R2P, Protection of Civilians, and UN Peacekeeping Operations