Field - Focused Workshop F9 on

Early Warning and Preventive Measures:
Building UN Capacity

29 January - 2 February 2001
Turin, Italy

List of participants | Photos | EWPM zone
Outputs (password protected)

Background

1. As the UN Secretary-General’s report to the General Assembly entitled: "Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform" (A/51/950 of 14 July 1997) indicates, it is crucial to understand the root causes of the prevailing multifaceted crises. As such, it is recognised that greater emphasis should be placed on timely and adequate early warning and preventive action. As the report states "the United Nations of the twenty-first century must become increasingly a focus of preventive measures".

2. The UN is already maintaining a multi-dimensional global watch to detect threats to international peace and security with the objective to supporting the efforts of the Security Council and the Secretary General to deter violent conflicts The primary aim of this project is to build institutional capacity by significantly improving professional and analytical skills and awareness of UN staff and its partners in the area of early warning and preventive measures, and as a corollary, by promoting greater mutual exchange and co-ordination within and between departments and offices dealing with policy and practical aspects of early warning and preventive measures.

3. The project is implemented thanks to funding support provided by the British, Italian, Canadian, Swedish, Norwegian and German Governments, as well as by the Turner Foundation. In 1998 a Design and Development Team comprised of representatives of the Department of Political Affairs, The Conflict Analysis and Development Unit of the London School of Economics, and the United Nations Staff College was set up to design and develop a series of workshops dealing with Early Warning and Preventive Measures. To date 3 pilots (1999), one senior managers workshop (1999), seven field based workshops (South Africa (1999), Thailand (1999), Kenya (2000), Nepal (2000), Dubai (2000), Cyprus (2000), Senegal (2000), Miami (2000) and five headquarters workshops (2000) have taken place. This was the first field focused workshop in 2001. The total of 585 participants have been trained in early warning analysis.

3. In September 1999 a training of trainers workshop was held at the UN Staff College with the aim to broaden the trainer base necessary for conducting future workshops. All participating UN agencies, departments, programmes, funds and offices were asked to select staff who have training knowledge as well as an understanding of conflict analysis. The total of 12 UN Staff were nominated. Thereafter the invitation was extended to Non-Governmental Organisations, Regional Organisations and Regional Training Institutes. Over 300 institutions were contacted and the final nominations from this group was 11. The total of 23 trainers from different backgrounds, experiences, nationalities and language skills were trained. For each future workshop three/four trainers are selected based on availability and familiarity with the region, and each training team includes UN and Non-UN trainers as well as a gender balance.

4. This ninth field-focused workshop (F9) was aimed at UN staff and its partners working in/with the Balkan region. Five country/situation cases were chosen from the area as examples to apply the skills learned.

Workshop Objectives

5. The specific objectives of the workshop to enhance the skills of participants and their capacity:

• To identify conflict causes and stages of conflict;
• To structure systematically early warning analysis;
• To identify and integrate a range of preventive measures;
• To use existing mechanisms for interdepartmental co-ordination;
• To improve quality and effectiveness of policy recommendations.

Workshop Participants

6. The workshop was attended by 13 UN headquarters staff from UNECE, OCHA, UNDP, DPA, DPKO, DGO, DESA and WFP and 35 field UN Staff from IOM, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNDP, OCHA, OHCHR, WFP, FAO, UNESCO, and WHO . Likewise the workshop was attended by one representative from HCI Productions Oy (Helsinki), with the aim to have an insight view into the methodology and be able to thereafter provide input into the development of a distance learning platform for the EWPM project. This was the first workshop in which 99% of the participants are either assigned to participating countries or are directly responsible for them.

7. Participants were grouped into five teams and were asked in their teams to apply the analytical and preventive measures planning skills to the five selected country and/or regional situations. The feedback received confirmed the usefulness of selecting "real" situations as example to apply the skills learned.

Areas of Focus and Methodology:

8. In the past feedback from previous workshops showed that it would have been useful to have one "module" as example for outputs desired which is used as thread throughout the workshop. Based on one example obtained in a past workshop, the training team elaborated such a "module", which was tested in the past workshop. It provided participants with a better understanding of how all elements of the workshop come together at the end, and helped participants grasp the expected outputs of the working sessions better. Although sessions made reference to this example, no specific feedback on it was received.

9. The participants manual was considered helpful and suggestions were made how and what to update. These recommendations will be taken into consideration for the future workshops.

10. The individual sessions of the workshop can be divided into five main knowledge and skill development areas:

11. The first of these is in the area of analytical processes related to early warning. Participants began by developing a joint situation profile and started the process of identifying factors, which can be seen as capacities for peace, as well as factors which need to kept in mind related to peace spoilers. The importance of recognising that the factors contributing to conflict are complex and interwoven was emphasised.

12. In the second area, participants continued assessing causes of conflict that could become early warning signals of potential disintegration. An analytical step was the development of the Venn Diagram & Pie chart, which shows the dynamic analysis of structural factors. Emphasis was placed on the identification of the "nugget" which constitutes the complexity of underlying structural causes and their dynamic interaction. This dynamic interaction is often manifested by a proximate cause of conflict and should be seen as an entry point to deal with more structural causes of conflict.

13. The third area of focus was related to the identification and integration of preventive action. Participants were asked to complete the "A3TR" exercise, and identify two specific preventive measures that might be taken to address the issues outlines in one of the case studies they decided to analyse. The reality that the need for comprehensive responses would call for cross-departmental co-operation, and for co-operation with other actors outside the UN System, was also stressed.

14. The fourth area of focus was joint planning and decision making. The unique nature of these workshop are that they bring together representatives of development, political, humanitarian UN agencies from headquarters and the field as well as other actors from the World Bank and Non-Governmental sector. The sharing of different approaches to conflict prevention and the discussions that led to identification of potential strategies was a highlight of the workshop. The framework for co-ordination, as well as other mechanisms and overall process of decision making in the UN were also explored. The emphasis on and support of co-operation and co-ordination among agencies characterised all of the working sessions.

15. The fifth area of focus was collecting all necessary elements in form of a preventive measures matrix, which would be included in a policy paper. Building on the outputs generated in the analytical sessions related to structural causes of conflict, the participants identified and discussed a range of preventive measures that might be employed. The matrix highlights recommendations for preventive measures that could, if implemented, positively address the structural causes and prevent a negative scenario from evolving. The groups all presented a matrix containing the results of their analysis and a set of recommended measures identifying initiatives that might be taken by the UN system and/or other actors. Participants were also asked to identify impact indicators in their matrixes, which can be used to measure the impact of the suggested preventive measures.

Before working on the matrix participants were asked to outline a worst case scenario which could evolve sparked by a specific "trigger from one of the issues identified in the "nugget". In a separate session after having worked on the matrix, each of the five teams outlined a ideal case scenario, which would represent the situation if the suggested preventive measures were applied to the cause of conflict. Much discussion took place around these sessions and feedback on the logic and methodology has been received from the participants.

Workshop Feedback

16. In addition to the above knowledge and skill areas, this workshop, as was true of the earlier events, also focused on obtaining feedback from participants on the workshop content and methodologies. In addition to written feedback through a written evaluation of the overall workshop, the Training Team met each day with representatives of the five teams and conducted sessions at the conclusion of the workshop to obtain suggestions for how subsequent sessions/workshops might be conducted. The daily feedback meetings were invaluable to the learning process. Very useful and good suggestions for future workshops resulted from these meetings.

Conclusions and Recommendations

17. The conclusions of this workshop were as follows:

• A UN-system wide focus on early warning and preventive measures is long overdue and increasingly more important. The material will be updated and some terminology revised to ensure that developments in this area are taking into consideration.
• The linkage between EWPM and the CCA needs to be better explored and more time dedicated to these existing processes at the field level, which are relevant to the implementation of EWPM. The session on field based co-ordination mechanisms needs to be redesigned to have a greater impact.
• It is of great importance to bring headquarters and field together to jointly analyse and exchange views proved a valuable experience for both sides.
• The process of sharing information, perspectives and analysis across agencies leads not only to a more comprehensive and qualitative understanding of what are most often very complex circumstances, but, perhaps more importantly, to the identification of a broader range of actions that can be employed to prevent conflict or reduce its impact.
• While it seems likely that there will always be a need to deal with emergencies, and therefore, to have a response capability, the UN system can, in co-operation with other partners including governments and non-governmental organisations, prevent a greater number of vulnerable situations from reaching emergency proportions.
• The situation analysis that serves as the foundation for later work in the course is a valuable and constructive way to begin. It also initiates the interaction among agencies that builds as the course develops. In this workshop input was received from all participants on each situation in format of a "talking wall" . This methodology worked very well and provided a broader perspective than the working group itself might have had.
• Analysing causes of conflict and enhancing participants’ awareness of conflict dynamics builds analytical skills and prepares participants for the analysis of early warning factors and context specific indicators.
• The analysis of early warning factors not only develops analytical skills and builds inter-agency co-operation, but also enhances understanding of agency approaches to early warning. Participants were asked to share their agency groups need for EWPM before analysing the needs of another group. Compared with past experiences, this session worked less well and needs redesigning for future workshops.
• The development of scenarios session this time was divided into two separate sessions with the aim to identify and strengthen the argument that if no preventive action is taken early on to address the structural conflict causes, then the situation could end up down the worst case track.
• The preventive measures matrix provides the elements for a policy paper focuses on analytical and planning skills as well as provides experience in preparing recommendations to address emerging conflict factors. A strong emphasis is placed on the need to make a compelling argument related to the recommendation presented. The presentation of the scenario and options for preventive measures with specific recommendations were critiqued by peers, and special attention was paid to the compelling argument.
• It needs to be stressed that in this particular workshop there were two Resident Co-ordinators and several department/agency directors present, which was extremely positive in light of the interaction, experience sharing and feedback received from the participants. Having senior decision makers and RC’s participate in these workshops needs to be encouraged.
• The quality of the outputs produced during this workshop have been superior to past workshops. An explanation for this lies in the fact that effective this workshops, only participants working in or directly with the selected regions are encouraged to participate. Having all participants being extremely familiar with the issues in the selected region has proven to be an advantage.
• The session on the policy drafting could be incorporated into the presentation skills session.
• The need to stress the early warning element and NOT crises reaction suggests, that it might be valuable to try and reverse the order of selected sessions to ensure that first all focus is reverted to EW. Later in the week, by means of the composite analysis, attention is then diverted to the issue of crises reaction and contingency planning. A session on contingency planning will be introduced into the next workshops.
• Much feedback has been received by participants on the distance learning platform and the idea of web-based follow-up mechanisms for alumni. It was also suggested that for this workshop, all outputs be put on the existing EWPM site (password protected).