CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.4 CONCLUSION
This program provides the learner with a background in intermediate-level topics of UN operational logistics. Topics include an overview of UN operational logistics, command and control, planning, supply, engineering support, fire protection, environmental measures, transportation, aviation and air services, maintenance, medical aspects of logistical support, communications, as well as postal and courier services (Leslie, 1999: 1-201).
Against the background of Africa’s dynamics and new security agenda, external actors are adapting their instruments and rethinking their options. After a series of disappointing peace missions in the 1990s (particularly in Angola, Rwanda, Somalia and Liberia), the UN Security Council has begun to renew its peace efforts in Africa (Burundi, Cote d’ Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia, for example).
Increasingly cross-cutting approaches are being sought that integrate elements from the fields of foreign policy, security and development policy. Interfaces and overlaps between civil and military spheres have grown at pace. The African continent has increasingly become the focal point of UN peacekeeping missions after the low ebb of the 1990s.
Peace missions call for a focus on comprehensive approaches, involving sufficient civil components (developmental peacekeeping) with the inherent challenge for sufficient post-conflict peace-building funding and capital.
The ownership and political leadership of external civil and military interventions must lie with African institutions. Although the AU’s ownership approach to peace and security on the African continent is fundamentally correct, it is contradictory to the funding and implementation capacities that are available.
UN military missions, both small and large and under widely varying mandates, have been staffed by multinational peacekeeping forces composed mainly of military units and military personnel who have been trained through their own national programmes.
Although these missions require a large number of military specialists, the involvement of civilians has expanded significantly, particularly where a peacekeeping operation has been called upon to perform duties that are less military in nature.
The same tendency prevails in other areas of UN field operations such as the more peaceful development activities. All UN field missions require staffing by personnel with extensive professional training in their own field of expertise.
In addition, these staff members must have an awareness of the complex working environment, including political, economic, and social and security conditions in the field. They must also have knowledge of multidisciplinary structures, especially the UN system itself. Personnel have to acquire the ability to handle these intricate concerns. This requires a coherent and cohesive training system that covers training at all levels.
Self-paced correspondence courses, such as those of UNITAR POCI, should be regarded as part of such a system. It is primarily aimed at those who are or would like to become members of UN/AU field missions and who would like to become better familiarised with the UN, its system, working conditions and requirements in the field.
There is an emerging consensus on the need to prepare for coordination before conflicts arise. This preparation involves better training that gives the military an insight into the ways in which humanitarian workers operate and familiarises themselves with the military approach.
Knowing and respecting each other’s mandates can help prevent misunderstandings. Training is, moreover, a means of fostering predictability.
This is very important for the military, for which the world of humanitarian action is one of perplexing diversity.
Training in advance also provides an additional opportunity to spread knowledge of international humanitarian law and especially its particular implications for peace-keeping operations among national troops.
Knowledge of the UN Secretary-General’s guidelines on international humanitarian law should be promoted, too, by the UN and by the governments themselves.
Military activity is but one element that has to integrate into the conduct of the overall campaign. The demands for comprehensive training are higher for peacekeeping operations than for war-fighting, particularly as the severity of extreme peace-support operations can equal, and even exceed, those of much war-fighting.
The diversity of tasks and sometimes their unexpected nature means that the training manuals cannot cope with every eventuality. This, in turn, implies that junior officers and NCOs may have to cope with situations drawing on inculcated values gained through education rather than procedures and tactics learned in training.
Education takes time and has to nurture. “Growing education” is a big concept and dependent on national education systems (Herrly, 2005: 1).
It is essential that personnel from all nations are guided by standard UN and AU approved operating procedures and that training is available to familiarise personnel with established doctrine. Such training must be standard, doctrinally correct, easily delivered to personnel of all nations, up-to-date and inexpensive.
Since the nature of PK on the African continent is comprehensive and complex, the importance of training is more evident, underscoring the urgent need for the AU to have a well-trained and prepared ASF participating in its various operations.
Since the attitudes, tactics and methods of peacekeeping operations diverge from conventional military doctrines, efforts must be taken to improve understanding of peacekeeping principles and techniques.
The proposed Model of Co-operative Education on PSO in Africa will assist in training peacekeepers by enhancing the general understanding of PK and providing specific knowledge of methods for serving on peace missions. The demands being made on PK and the multifaceted character of contemporary operations call for greater attention to be paid to the training and preparation of anyone involved in a PK operation.