civcap - Promoting Civilian Capacity for International Peace Operations

Background and Context

The number of international civilian experts in peacebuilding missions of the United Nations and of regional organisations such as the European Union, the African Union and the OSCE has steadily increased during the last years. At the same time, the mandates and tasks of those missions have become more complex and more specific, which consequently leads to greater need of highly qualified personnel.

Those responsible for human resources in international organisations and national institutions face critical shortages in crucial areas, entailing that key positions can often not be filled with experienced professionals.

This situation creates increasing pressure on the national and multinational players to meet with solutions in the areas of recruitment, preparation, deployment, training and support of civilian personnel and the need to network amongst and to support each other. Therefore, governments and international organisations are intensifying a professional exchange regarding models, tools and working methods, i.e. best practices, in the field of human resources.

ZIF's Mandate

Since its foundation, ZIF was actively engaged in the international dialogue on issues related to recruitment and training of civilian peacebuilding personnel. Meanwhile, ZIF itself and its cooperation with the Federal Foreign Office in deploying civilian personnel to peace operations has been recognised as a leading example. Accordingly, ZIF has been increasingly approached for advice. The present project is compliant with the mandate of ZIF to strengthen international civilian capacities for crisis prevention, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. All three pillars of ZIF are involved in the project:

• Training of civilian specialists and executives
• Recruitment, placement and support of civilian personnel
• Analysis, lessons learned, advice and information, seminars and conferences

Project for Promoting Civilian Capacity for International Peace Operations

The project - a joint undertaking of ZIF and national/multilateral, governmental/non-governmental partners –

• addresses the need for in-depth exchange on technical issues and aspects of HR marketing, recruitment, institutional arrangements, policy frameworks;
• supports to a network of bilateral and multilateral agencies and focal points responsible for civilian human resources;
• manages a web-portal providing hands-on, ready-to-use information and research for practitioners and policy-makers for civilian capacities on www.civcap.info; and
• supports directly recruitment offices in Eastern Europe, Africa and other regions.

June 2010