Comprehensive Approach Workshop, Brussels
The UK Delegation to NATO organised an informal workshop on 8 March 2007 to explore issues arising from the implementation of a comprehensive approach to operations. The workshop involved speakers and attendees from a range of organisations, including UN, EU, NGOs and Partners nations. The themes and proposals arising from the workshop were as follows:
SESSION ONE: TRAINING AND EXERCISING TOGETHER: INTERNATIONAL ACTORS PLANNING AND DEPLOYING TOGETHER
Key themes arising from discussions:
- The need to establish a balance between inclusivity and leadership. The broader the range of actors in consensus-based consultation and coordination mechanisms, the more difficult effective leadership becomes.
- Terminology. Terms such as leadership, integration, coordination and cooperation carry different connotations and levels of ambition in different groups.
- Interdependence between comprehensive approaches on the national and international levels. More coherent national approaches could lead to better coherence of multilateral responses and vice versa.
- How to ensure security actors make better use of the often profound local knowledge possessed by humanitarian and development actors, while recognising differences in approaches. These differences in approaches tend to become starker in hostile environments.
- The importance of personal contacts and networks and the potential of joint training and exercising to facilitate better mutual awareness and bridge some of the gaps (e.g. different mindsets) between civilian and military actors. How this might help establish a "culture of cooperation" in the planning and conduct of operations; and facilitate "coordination with a light touch".
SESSION TWO: ISSUES ARISING FROM CO-DEPLOYMENT OF CIVIL AND MILITARY ACTORS IN POTENTIALLY HOSTILE ENVIRONMENTS
Key themes arising from discussions:
- The advantages of different actors working together in, and out of, theatre while maintaining a distinction between integration and co-ordination.
- The lack of a suitably large pool (to ensure that the right expertise is availability to deploy) of civilian capability, and the potential benefits of drawing upon locally based expertise from other international actors.
- The availability of appropriate training, and ensuring that all actors are able to shape and benefit from this training.
- Identifying a ‘unity of purpose’ within an operation to allow actors to identify activities of common interest.
- The importance of local actor involvement, coupled with good governance locally, to long-term sustainable success.
Proposals for further work:
- Maintaining regular personal and institutional contacts between actors;
- Increasing awareness of the different processes, cultures and operational rhythms of actors to breakdown institutional barriers to co-working;
- Provision of joint training facilities and/or events for all actors, and exploration of funding sources and other resource assistance to enable all actors to participate;
- Coherence of, or at least better understanding of, the different duty of care, allowance provision, relationships with local actors and other issues when deploying actors from different institutions;
- Maximising the synergies between work on comprehensive approach at the national and multilateral levels.
