A proposal for a training program for international peace-keeping organizations Essay

The peace keeping program explores the training needs and practices of four distinct groups involved in peace operations- US government agencies, the military, international civilian police, and non governmental organizations- that are expected to respond, separately or collaborate, to emergencies in affected areas around the world (Schoenhaus, 2002 p 9). The United States government has been said to have little ability today to respond rapidly to an international humanitarian emergency with a well-trained disaster response team. The delivery of adequate training to U. S. government personnel for the management of complex emergencies has been hampered by three distinct shortcomings; inadequate training content, inadequate training coverage, and the absence of a single command center with responsibility for improving training in complex emergency management (Schoenhaus, 2002 p 9). There is a stark contrast between the capabilities of the military and civilian communities at the beginnings of operations. The military in general has abundant resources and a clear mission under unified control. However this has not been the case with the civilian sector in peace operations, which is beset with multiple and conflicting agendas and generally enters the post intervention period lacking adequate resources, builds slowly, and spends an inordinate amount of time coordinating its own efforts rather than addressing the needs of the society in which it has intervened (Schoenhaus, 2002 p 9-10). The militaries role should be to lead from behind acknowledging the primacy of the primacy of the civilian goals and coordinating its support so that it becomes a continuation of the civilian effort by other means. (Bailey, 1982). The civilian success will be based on adapting the international standards to the new political environment and gaining public acceptance instead of re-establishing failed systems. The development of all fronts is necessary like infrastructural, economic, human and the leadership (Bankus 2002, p. 4) A system should be put in place to generate leaders who can articulate, evaluate, and solve problems. There must be a public debate on how the international community prepares its post intervention efforts. There should also be a core training curriculum for all actors involved in the humanitarian-relief and peace operations that are based on common, holistic visions. Such a curriculum would be built around enhanced human relations, interpersonal skills, communi cation, and management (Schoenhaus, 2002 p 9). Beyond this core training requirement, the individual agencies and organizations must recruit and train their staff to be experts in their areas of operations. At present, however there is no centralized training facility or a common curriculum that prepares civilians for the challenges they face in responding to international emergencies (Schoenhaus, 2002 p 9). Although both the US. Government agency and NGO communities recognize that there is need for common and more efficient training, the lack of commitment in terms of organizational culture, as well as the lack of time and resources, limits their efforts. The U. S. Government as suggested should take the lead in developing core training requirements and assign responsibilities to various agencies and other participants that could be trained at a common -use facility devoted to international training and response to complex emergencies. Doing this however requires significant resources, as well as a consensus among the agencies and the governments that support them (Felfer, 2002). The Military Training the Military for Peace Operations: A Past, Present and Future View. It has always been a practice on the global front to use the military forces in performing military related operations apart from war. (Goodbye, 1992)Granted the main responsibility of the military is to be prepared for any threat of war. In many countries, attempts have not been made by many governments train the military forces in other areas which are not related to main mission. (Bedrail, 1993). This has led to a realization among many states that there is need to train the military in other areas different from war because it is increasingly becoming important to do so (Zartman & Rasmussen, 1997). In the pat training the military for matters of peace has been not been structured and were largely based on the experiences which were inherited from the predecessors in which case the military acquired skills which were unique to some specific operational area (Miltenberger & Weiss, 2000). In coming up with a training program for the military destined for peacekeeping missions, it will be important to consider several factors like doctrine leadership as well as equipment. At the same time it is necessary to factor in the element of force mix besides other factors like training as well as the quality of the human capital. It is important to note that all these factors will be of utmost importance though the doctrine will provide the basic principles upon which the military will support the objectives of the nation. This implies therefore that there will be a positive correlation between tough but realistic military training and their victory on any war mission. This actually is the basis of the training philosophy of the U. S military (Berger & Rice, 2001). It will therefore be important that in pursuit of the above philosophy, the military training program be guided by the following fundamental factors. First it will be important that the military be trained as a combined team. The rationale behind this is that it will lead to the achievement of the proficiency of not only the leaders and individuals but also the specific military units. It will equally be important to structure the training as to replicate a real fighting situation besides employing the most appropriate doctrines and rules obtained from documents like the training plan for mission activities (Schoenhaus, 2001). It will also be important that the designed military training program incorporates a practical approach. This implies that the training program will need to be performance related. At the same time, it will be necessary to anticipate and train for challenging scenarios besides training in such a way as to ensure that the proficiency of the military is not eroded in any way. The implication for this is that there will be need to ensure that the trained military personnel do not lose the skills they will have acquired. It will equally be important to consider the various rank-techniques comprise several levels of the structures of command. Last it will be important to take good care of the training equipment as well as employing the senior and experienced military commanders to facilitate the training programs (Smock, 1999). It is important note here that just like in any training program, time will play a crucial role in influencing the military training program. It therefore implies that both the training time as well as other resources will be limited thereby necessitating the need to structure the training program in a way that only the very important mission tasks are accomplished. This would mean that all the essential activities are first selected before conditions and benchmarks for each of the identified activities can be set under the guidance of the commander. The expectation will be that all the military units will be capable of accomplishing the tasks in relation to the performance benchmarks. The end result of the above structure will be the development of a training strategy which will determine the required standard of proficiency (Smock, 1999). The military do have the opinion that issues of peace building are not central to its main objective of war. However it is interesting to note that there is a considerable agreement that properly trained military also make the best agents of peace given the fact that they are usually disciplined. Depending on the level of technical knowledge of a military officer ( Huggland, 1992). destined for a peace keeping mission, it is important to offer additional training like on the areas of negotiations, check areas, skills for stopping civil arrests as well as risk managements (Sisk, 1999). Additional training would equally be needed for instance in cases where there is need to familiarize oneself with the affected region as well as for operations that are multinational in nature. (Mackinlay and Chopra, 1992). It will equally be necessary for the military officers to understand the engagement rules pertaining to the various settings besides the need to have skills for managing a case of confiscated materials. All these factors will be necessary owing to the fact that a peace keeping environment would not be the same as an environment of war as the former will require a great deal of sensitivity in the conduct of the operations (Simmons, 1999). It is thus important to acknowledge the fact that it would be adequate to conduct some training for the military before deploying them to the affected areas. However this alone would not suffice thus calling for the need for additional peacetime training in matters concerning peace. (Rifkind, 1993). The realization was that it was still a challenge for the military to manage political as well as civilian aspects of the military Thus, there is needed a benchmark of generic activities as well as standards to act as a guide to all the military units in matters relating to peace operations trainings(Berger & Rice, 2001).