 Good morning, and welcome to the United States Institute of Peace. My name is George Moose, and I have the privilege of serving as the vice chair of the board of directors of the Institute. And I'm delighted with the turnout here this morning for this event, which is one of a series that the Institute has hosted on international peace operations. And I'm pleased to welcome those who are joining us through the webcast. And at this point, if I might, invite everyone to turn off their cell phones and other electronic devices because they have a tendency to interfere with our very fussy audio system. As most of you I think know, USIP is an independent federal institute that was tasked by the US Congress some 30 years ago to develop practical approaches to preventing and resolving violent conflict across the globe. And over the past three decades, the Institute has remained committed to applying the best research, the best field work, and training as part of our sustained vision of a world-free and violent conflict. As global issues have grown larger and more complex, our mission has also become more challenging. We're here today to discuss perhaps one of the most complex challenges facing international conflict, and that is peacekeeping operations in Africa. And we're especially pleased to be co-hosting the event today with the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. United Nations, as we know, have a very long and impressive record of contributing to peace operations and conflict zones around the world, going back to the deployment of the United Nations operations in the Congo in 1960. Ghana in particular has earned the international reputation as one of the largest and most consistent troop contributing countries in UN-mandated peace operations. And today, Ghana has over 3,000 personnel involved in peace operations, including those in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Mali, and the Central African Republic. Now, throughout Africa, peacekeepers are tasked with increasingly broad and complex mandates, including civilian protection, counterinsurgency operations, adding additional complexity to their challenges, and it also adds to the requirements for operational training, for political training and sensitivity, and other dimensions of the modern peacekeeping. To these challenges, it must regrettably be added the critical issue of how peacekeepers themselves conduct and discipline themselves in conflict zones. Regrettably this challenge, which is by no means new, but it has been given added urgency in recent months by documented cases of sexual abuse and exploitation by UN peacekeepers, most notably in the Central African Republic. As the number of peacekeepers, peacekeeping missions and budgets continue to rise, these new challenges will certainly impact US and international policy towards peace operations. In September of last year, President Obama, as many of you know, convened a summit of peacekeeping contributors in New York and reaffirmed US support for UN peacekeeping operations. With this renewed focus, the international community can look to Ghana's rich experience in peacekeeping for some useful lessons. Here at USIP, our support for peacekeeping operations in Africa extends beyond thought leadership and discussions, like the one we were having here today. Since 2008, our Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding has supported the State Department's Africa Contingency Operations and Training Assistance Program, otherwise known as ACOTA, by providing training and analysis, communication, negotiation and third-party roles, as well as on early warning and protection of civilians to selected recipient countries. To date, USIP has trained over 3,800 peacekeepers in 19 African countries. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Darina Biko, who will in turn introduce our guest speaker. Dr. Biko is a faculty member at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, where her focus has been on Africa's peace operations, security challenges, and conflict prevention. She has also worked on issues concerning Africa's political development and institutional reform, and she has written extensively on electoral violence and the challenge of implementing peace agreements in Africa. Dr. Biko. Oh, good morning. And first, let me thank USIP for this opportunity to co-host this event on peacekeeping in Ghana and also peacekeeping in Africa more broadly. But let me introduce you to Colonel Emmanuel Kotiat. It's really my distinct pleasure to do so. I've known him for several years, just working on African peacekeeping. He is the chief instructor and co-ordinate of academic programs at the Kofi Annan Center of International Peacekeeping, which is in Accra, Ghana. He's also a clinical professor of peace and conflict studies at Kenesaw University, and he teaches at, he teaches also international conflict management and peace security. He's had several tours, peacekeeping missions, both on the continent and outside. He served with the ECOWAS monitoring peacekeeping mission in Liberia. He served in Western Sahara. He served in Cambodia and Unamir in Rwanda, as well as Munuk in the DRC. He has been part of the Ghana Armed Forces since 1986 and is intricately involved in constructing several different courses at the Kofi Annan Center, one of which is gender war and conflict in Africa. So with that, let me turn it over to Colonel Kotiat. Thank you very much, Dorina. And thank you to USIP and ACSS for putting this together. Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, we're looking at the future of peacekeeping in Africa lessons from Ghana. There's no doubt that there are merits to peacekeeping. And I'll start from that angle. Peacekeeping has reduced the intensity of armed conflicts. The abstract conflict data indicates that 40% of this has been achieved since 1990. The likelihood of war reigniting has reduced because of peacekeeping. And the number of deaths in the world have also reduced out of peacekeeping. It is important at this stage to put in perspective, since the topic deals with peacekeeping in Africa and to give the African perspective, the future of peacekeeping in Africa can be seen as one of the areas that there will be more concentration. Currently, the highest number of peacekeeping operations is based in Africa. Africa is still recording conflicts. And for that reason, we can see future peace operations still jettos Africa. And the latest missions in the UN peacekeeping history is South Sudan, Central African Republic, and we are seeing it in that light. I'm hoping that probably if things go well, probably there may be a reduction of conflicts so that we can see how peacekeeping would reduce. But then it is important to interrogate peacekeeping in Africa based on some of these issues that I've raised. But then I'll be using the lessons from Ghana in particular in making up these discussions. Again, I've written a book on Ghana Armed Forces Experience in Lebanon and Liberia in these missions that I've participated thoroughly. And I will be coming out some of the lessons that I've teased out from my experience in this book. And African states first contributed peace operations as our initial and moderate aid. Since the deployment of the UN in the Congo in 1990, the consistency of African states to contribute to peace operation has made the major stakeholders so far as peace operations is concerned in the maintenance of international peace and security, which is a major team so far as the UN is concerned. Now Ghana's peace operation began, as I've mentioned, along with the UN operations in Congo. Now Africa, Ghana's participation in that mission was driven and inspired by the pan-Africanist views of our first president, Dr. Ankwa Mankomai. In that case, the pan-Africanist ideals encouraged other countries to contribute troops to the UN Congo operations, and notably Mali, Tunisia, Nigeria, Sudan, Liberia and other countries. Now that was the beginning of the contribution of African states to peace operations so far as the continent was concerned. Now in this discussion, I will give you a short perspective about Ghana in peacekeeping operations. I'll come out some few lessons drawn from Ghana's experience in peacekeeping operations. And I'll just briefly look at the measures of how to help to improve peacekeeping in Africa and then I will draw conclusions. Now the Congo experience that I mentioned earlier has continued to shape Ghana's foreign policy and commitment to its participation in peace operation. Now Ghana's foreign policy is based on some few guidelines. First, maintaining friendly relations and cooperation with all countries, and that is one of the basis by which Ghana normally helps participate in peacekeeping operation. Now Ghana wants to be at peace with all nations that is driven so far as the foreign policy is concerned. Now more importantly, Ghana aims at supporting the UN to maintain international peace and security. Invariably, that has been the underlying fact why Ghana continues to participate in peacekeeping operations since 1960 up to date. Now up to day Ghana has provided personnel for over 20 major peacekeeping operations under the UN, the African Union and the ECOWAS. The lessons on Ghana's experience is drawn from the study from the peace operations in Liberia, Lebanon, Cambodia, Western Sahara, and a number of countries that one can think about. Now what are the major lessons that can be derived from this peacekeeping experience that Ghana has been? Now it's important for us to understand that before any country or even any organization or any other guest involved in peacekeeping operation, the nature and causes of conflicts must be interrogated. This has been one of the key issues that countries must consider or actors must consider or policy makers must consider before inserting troops. You must be able to know the typologies and phases of conflicts in Africa before you intervene. Without this, you may be bound to fail because without the nature of the conflict, you might not understand the operations of the war and factions. Without the nature of the conflict, without making analysis on the nature of the conflict, you might not be able to come out of the correct or the appropriate concept of operation to be able to tackle these conflicts so far as peacekeeping operation is concerned. But more than not, there have been experiences where peacekeepers have been deployed without policy makers or without various actors making a critical study on the nature of the conflict and it has had an effect. Our experience in Liberia clearly was that we didn't understand the nature of the conflict. So we were taken aback when we arrived and suddenly we were being faced by the partogonists and eventually on the last count in Liberia, they had no less than 20 war and factions. So the understanding of the nature of the conflict, the causes of the conflict is key. Related to this is the environmental conditions of for peacekeeping. One must understand the environment very well. If you don't understand the environment, you might not be able to come out of the various strategies that you want to evolve so far as peacekeeping is concerned. Indeed, looking at the environment, for instance, even if you just take weather or the climate conditions, that would tell you what equipment to go with so far as peacekeeping operation is concerned. Indeed, most of the failures of peacekeeping, especially in Africa having that, it will surprise you that Ghana and Nigeria were very close to Liberia. But yet, when we're going to Liberia, we didn't understand the environment in Liberia. And I'll give you one key example. I didn't, for instance, most of the troops didn't know that between July, August, September, it rains in Liberia almost every day. So we arrive in Liberia without rain suits. So we can imagine we're always drain washed and wet so far as our movement was concerned. That alone was a moral issue. The issue of knowing that the conditions or the conditions so far as the climate was, in Liberia was concerned was key. Now, looking at Lebanon, which I used to make a comparison later on, in Lebanon, for instance, most of the peacekeepers didn't know the extent of minefields in Lebanon. So a number of contingents had a lot of casualties because their vehicles ran into minefields because the environment was not well-studied. They didn't tease out issues so far as the environment was concerned before they were deploying. Another issue that is related to the environment is that one must understand whether in that environment there is a peace agreement that has been secured or can be secured before the inception of peacekeepers. The case of Liberia was an example. And that was key. The case of Somalia is an example. That was key. And that is the reason why the troops were faced, even though in Liberia, we're supposed to keep the peace by traditional metals. But when we arrive in Liberia on the sprinkle of an eye, the operation was turned into a peace enforcement or a war situation because of this situation. So it's important that the environment is considered. The conditions and conditions for peacekeeping is analyzed very well before peacekeepers are involved. If the environment is analyzed very well, these are terms that can assess to be able to draw various plans for the peacekeepers. The mandates for operations must be thoroughly discussed and analyzed with stakeholders. In most times and in the past, mandates are decided that the UN headquarters with trickles of information and the mandates are drawn. But we are seeing an improvement where stakeholders or probably people within the various factions are involved. Now, an example was the comprehensive peace agreement in 2003 for the Liberian conflict. That was very welcome. But then, other issues of mandate must be discussed thoroughly so that you carry along the citizens that you are going to protect. For instance, a peacekeeping operation is to go and protect the citizens. And most of the conflicts that we have today are intra-state conflicts. Now, these people that you are going to protect must have a say, must be part of the decisions that you are taking. Otherwise, you will be isolated as a peacekeeper when you are deployed in the peacekeeping environment. And that must be analyzed, discussed with the stakeholders and various attests must be involved. And that will make peacekeeping succeed. In Liberia, for instance, it was a different situation. But in Lebanon, in the first instance, the Lebanese invited the UN to Lebanon. So that was OK. But then, in later circumstances with Resolution 1701, with the enhanced rules of engagement, the locals admitted that they were not involved and they were not consulted. And the UN decided that the Lebanese armed forces should expand to southern Lebanon. Once there were no proper consultation, modalities were not drawn. So far, these peace operations were concerned. And these issues have been determined. The timing of the drawer and drawer down of peacekeeping mission should be carefully considered before it's implemented. Without that, you may create a vacuum. And that can lead to a relapse of the conflict. In Liberia, it's a key example. Liberia, UNIFIL withdrew in 1997 without post-conflict reconstruction, devolming, or mechanisms for transition. So far, the political situation was concerned. What happened? In 2001, there was a relapse of the war. In Lebanon, the UN decided, naturally, based on some suggestions from other actors to withdraw the force and leave only two battalions, Ghana and India. Now, what happened in 2006? Well, there was a relapse of a war. There was an outbreak of war. UNIFIL never had that number of contingents after Resolution 1701, as we had, as of now. Now, that was a result of a timely draw. Today, we are facing a similar situation in Liberia. And I can tell you that if the UN doesn't take time to analyze the situation in Liberia, and they withdraw as they started drawing that, they withdraw just before the election or after the immediately after the election, we're going to have a problem in Liberia. Because, one, the various security agencies are not aware of the source to be able to carry on with activities of peace, so far as Liberia is concerned. The Liberian military and the police and other agencies, other security institutions, have been trained, they've been mentored, OK. But where are the resources to match the training that they have? Without the resources, they might not be able to keep the peace that must be kept. The policy of logistic by troop contributing has not been well understood. Now, in most cases, contingents would deploy, even though they would have signed an memorandum of understanding with the UN for deployment. But yet, the basic policy of knowing the right-least system which the UN gradually is drifting into, they don't know it very well. So they are caught up with lack of equipment. They are caught up with inefficiency. And they are caught up. The peacekeepers are not able to deploy even to places that they need equipment. The necessary equipment are required so far as peacekeeping is concerned. And without those equipment, we might not be able to succeed so far as peacekeeping is concerned. The challenges of regional-led peacekeepers is enormous. Now, the first challenge of regional-led peacekeeping force that has been a lesson has been unfunded. And Liberia is a key example. I can tell you from a tentacle like that. In Liberia, if not because of the backing of Nigeria, the oppression in Liberia would not have succeeded. Now, let me tell you, Ghana was able to pay its troops, of course, the PDM that they were paying. Nigeria was sub-styling or paying troops of the smaller countries that were contributing to the oppression. In addition, fuel was a problem in Liberia. And we can imagine that probably we would not be able to move. The peacekeeping operation in Liberia would not be able to move during the Ecomopiro. But Nigeria was supplying fuel at that time. Nigeria even provided helicopters. They bought brown new helicopters for the operation. The number of forces that they deployed was overwhelming. So far as Ecomopiro is concerned. It took the leadership of Nigeria and Ghana to lead that operation. Now, without the necessary logistics, regional peacekeeping would fail. They might not be able to succeed. There is a need for funding, so far as regional peacekeeping is concerned. There is a need for them to be beefed up with logistics. There is a need for them to be even beefed up with training and what have you so far as regional peacekeeping is concerned. Just saying regional peacekeeping lead the situation has been a problem. Now, just cast your mind back. Why is it that Ecomoc and even the African were not able to deploy in Mali until the French went in there? It was purely because of logistics and funding. They didn't have the funding to deploy. They were kept on standby to move. The African standby was there. The ECOA standby was there. But it was not able to deploy because of funding issues. And it is important that we look at it. And this is related to the use of global regional partnership. Now, probably before Ecomoc even there was a drawdown of Ecomoc operations in 1997. The UN partnered Ecomoc so far as that operation was concerned. That was the very first time that chapter 8 of the UN Charter was implemented, where the UN sent military observers to partner ECOA so far as the peacekeeping operation was concerned. But there were some difficulties. There were different structures. There was no unity of command because both groups were reporting to different commanders. The mandates of the regional partners was completely different. There was suspicion among the various groups based on the resources that the UN personnel brought. And a lot of issues were affected. Now, there is a need also in looking at regional peacekeeping to think about the provision of technical and planning aspects to the OAU in particular, because we're talking about African peacekeeping. And it is important that this is taking serious look because the various regional groupings might not have the necessary expertise. They might not have the necessary technical knowledge. So for a peace, the UN forest has been involved in this. They have been able to gather a number of technical expertise and planning expertise, probably sharing with the AU, organizing training courses, training of training courses, or even planning together would help to address the situation. Another lesson was the lack of strategic efforts in prevention, conflict prevention, and mediation. And that is key, that is key, especially in Africa. It is a weak issue. We gather with, when there are conflicts, we gather a number of diplomats, former hero states, to go and mediate as part of conflict prevention. Now, what I want to say is that it is important for us to understand that some of these mediators sometimes need training. And then some of these mediators may need to understudy or they may need to go to the nature of conflict. How is the environment because a problem in this particular country is, in particular in country A, it's not the same. The nature of conflict in Manila would be the same for country B. There is a need for sustained conflict prevention. Otherwise, when the Manila would be able to say, there is a need for the African Union, equal as another regional body, to improve upon their weak structures. The African Union, for instance, African peace and security infrastructure, the early warning system is a, but it's not working. It is not working. And for that matter, we continue to have conflicts in the region. It is not working because the council of the wise and the councils of the wise are not effective. They are not working. These fractures have been there, they are on paper, but they are not effective. They've not had training. In my center, the Gofiana International Peacekeeping Training Center, we decided to come up with a course on conflict analysis and mediation. And we are taking on operational level and probably middle to top level practitioners and actors in this style course. And the lessons that we have learned out of this course is, it can be unimaginable. And it's very tremendous. It's very important that they go through this training. Without the training, the lack of proper, getting genuine mediators will be lacking. We need to go back to work and we need to do conflict analysis to be able to educate our mediators very well so far as conflict prevention. And that is a place that must be strengthened at the African level. The inadequate numbers for deployment of peacekeeping operations in Africa is key. And that is a very important thing. And this, we've spoken about it. There are a number of operations in Africa where you need numbers. But yet, for instance, in Mali, they have only 10,000 troops. Mali, in that area of the Sahara and what have you, and with the vast population, a vast area, you might need no less than 30,000 troops. And yet, only 10,000 troops are there. That is even related to police. Police, very difficult to get the numbers of police. Indeed, most missions have set up a certain target and they've not been able to get because local governments are not ready to give their policing for peacekeeping operations those numbers to pick them up because they need those police forces for their own internal control and law and order. And then most of the police specialists who are trained, governments are not ready to release them to go on peace operation because they need them in their country to be able to do a lot of work. So this is another area that needs to be addressed and there is a need for sustainability. Now, it's important that with all these lessons that I've drawn, there are many others that probably other speakers will think about or when we get to the discussion period or talk. But there are certain proposed measures that probably I'll be presenting to see how best we could probably look at peace operations in Africa and based on the lessons from Ghana. There is the total requirement for planning for peacekeeping operations. And that planning will be based on knowledge. That planning will be based on knowing the nature of the complex. That planning will be based on knowing the environment. With a no other proper planning and looking at the requirements so far as peacekeeping is concerned, you might not be able to come up with appropriate mandates. It is true proper planning and requirement with the necessary ingredients of conflict analysis. You need to do conflict analysis. You need to analyze and interrogate issues very much. Without doing that, you might not be able to come up with the required plans so far as peacekeeping operations. And you might dismiss it by coming out of a mandate that might not meet the condition that is on the ground. And it is important for us on that. And that has been the mission link. Most of the mismatch in Africa has been in proper mandate. And that has been the key. There should be mandates also that one can easily switch over to be able to achieve. Clarity of operations through dialogue with through and police, a police contributor. It's very sad that sometimes the group was in duty countries. They do not even have dialogue with the organizers of peacekeeping. And for that matter, the clarity, the operations, the attacks that they are supposed to perform is not clear. And sometimes commanders from various contingents apply what they think is best. And there is no unity of command. There is no understanding so far as working together is concerned. So a contingent is operating separately and implementing something separately. And there is a need for that clarity so that the two contributing countries, both police and military countries, do be on one scale. The operational capabilities and performance of uniform personnel is also very key. In this regard, I think that it is important for us to understand the issues so far as the capabilities are concerned. There is a need for us to understand that there should be rapid deployment of military and police. How can we achieve that? We can achieve this, especially in Africa, by resourcing and by training the African standby forces and making them operational and they call standby forces and other regional standby forces. If you have regional standby forces, when there is a conflict, they can easily deploy to a situation, probably calm down the situation before probably permanent mechanisms are set in place to be able to restore peace. The high degree of operational readiness is also associated to this and it's very key. Without high degree of operational readiness, we might not be able to achieve the operational capabilities and performance of our uniform personnel. It is important for the readiness of our troops and police personnel and even with the civilian personnel to be resized. That can be done through training and that can be devolved knowing the sort of mandate that one is supposed to perform. There's also the need for a proper adherence to central command. The unity of command is key. Central command and control. It's not that contingents will be deployed whilst they are giving orders. They are taking instructions from their home country. Whilst the UN or the organization or the AU or whatever organization has appointed a force commander, an SRSJ, commands and decisions that are taken at that level must be abide without referring to countries and that has been one of the issues. And being on less this issue is to resolve. There will be problems. Operational capabilities relates to training as well. There's the need for the improvement of training. There's the need for collective effort to enhance training of uniform personnel. There is a need for training institutions to be satisfied by the UN so that there will be unisms so far as training is concerned. Not that one country will be conducting its pre-department training on a completely different SOP and not on a different SOP. There is a need for us to coordinate and unify the training so far as peacekeeping operation is concerned. The pre-department training should be maximized and it should be maximized very much and it is important that it should be improved. There is also the need for a selection of efficient and accountable leaders for peacekeeping operation. One, the right leaders should be selected for peacekeeping operations. They should be political akumi. They should have some kind of mediation expertise. They should have regional knowledge of the area that they are going to operate. They should have management skills and they should have commitment to human rights. Without that, we will not have a proper leaders so far as peace operation is concerned. And that has been one of some of the issues where force commanders or leaders or missions have been withdrawn abruptly so far as peacekeeping operations are concerned. There is also the need for the improved representation of women in senior leadership so far as peacekeeping is concerned. Comprehensive leadership training for incoming senior missions is key. And I have just read the UN High Panel report and I saw some of these recommendations that have come but there is a need also to organize a performance assessment so far as the leaders are concerned. The performance assessment should be revised to ensure proper feedback so that leaders will be here responsible so far as any failures are concerned. There is a lot I mentioned about the need for conflict mediation, prevention and mediation. Discrete engagement through dialogue and manifestation human rights is key so far as conflict mediation is concerned. There is a need for engagement by the UN, AU and stakeholders as the most powerful to so far as conflict mechanism is concerned. The early action by proposed light team of experts made of human rights, monitors, developmental partners is very key. It is also important to understand that there is the need for the commitment of truth from Western states apart from improving numbers for the plumbing in conflict areas and that is the last point that I'm making. What we've realized in Africa is that in most cases the African countries that contribute troops to peacekeeping are not well equipped but then because of obvious reasons they have issues or social issues to intervene. Now to take money to go and buy heavy equipment which they are not already equipped to go for peacekeeping always have a problem and it has effects so far as robust peace and mandates for peacekeeping is concerned. Now without the commitment of Western countries who already have the resources like helicopters, high equipment and logistics is going to affect peacekeeping in Africa. Now it is important that the Western countries continue to asset not only financially but to participate in peacekeeping operations in Africa and then that will also help to improve the numbers so far as peacekeeping is concerned. On this note I want to thank you so much for your attention and how the guests that I'm sorry when it gets to questions. Thank you very much. Attention. Thank you very much. Well Colonel Cotillo you have compressed into your presentation a wealth of observations and lessons learned from your vast experience in peace operations and I want to thank you for watching this conversation. What we'd like to do now is I'd like to invite my friend and colleague Paul Williams to offer some comments and give a chance also to Dr. Bico to say a word or two and then we're going to open it up to your questions and comments for Colonel Cotillo. Paul Williams is Associate Professor of International Affairs Associate Director of the Security Policy Studies MA program at the Elliott School at George Washington University. He currently serves on the editorial board of several boards of several scholarly journals including African Affairs and International Peacekeeping and Global Governance and he manages the Providing for Peacekeeping Project which is an independent research project that studies how to develop more effective United Nations peacekeeping operations. He's also my colleague at the Elliott School. Paul, welcome. Thank you very much. Ambassador, so yes, thank you Colonel for the overview of Ghana's experiences. My job here was to do two things really, to flag up a few what I think are the key lessons that emerge from Ghana's experience in peacekeeping and then set the scene a little bit more broadly to talk about some of the key lessons that I think have emerged from peace operations in Africa. So to re-emphasize what the Colonel's already said, I mean, I think to be honest, he was being too modest. I think the world of peace operations needs more Ghana's. Basically we would be better off as a world and certainly as an African continent if we had more countries like Ghana and their commitment to peace operations and just to reiterate some of the things that he skirted over. Ghanaians have been deploying in UN missions as we heard since the 1960s. There have now been over 80,000 Ghanaian personnel, soldiers, police and civilians deployed in missions to over 30 different operations. And importantly I think it's key to remember over 130 Ghanaian peacekeepers have been killed on UN missions. And one of the things that Ghana does that sadly not every African country does is actually publicly recognize the deaths of their peacekeepers. So I think that's one important point to make. Secondly, Ghana doesn't just deploy in Africa. We see, as we've heard, Ghana's deployed to Cambodia, Lebanon, Haiti, Kashmir, as well as a whole lot of conflicts in the African continent. And it's deployed, I think it's important again to flag up a stunningly large proportion of its own soldiers have been peacekeepers. If you look, as we saw, the figures are about for easily now 15 years or so, Ghana has regularly deployed over 3,000 soldiers into UN peacekeeping operations. The Ghanaian army is only about 11,000 strong. So I mean, we're looking here at a country that deploys between sort of 20 and 25% of its armed forces to peace operations of one sort or another. I wouldn't commit 100% to this, but I think that's got to be close to the world-leading proportion here. So if not Ghana, who would be my question in terms of proportion? And importantly as well, about 10% of those personnel have been women over the last few years. Now, clearly there's room for improvement, but compared to a lot of countries, 10% female deployment is actually pretty good, comparatively. Ghana has also deployed around 10% of its peacekeepers as troop, sorry, as police, individual police officers and formed police units, and that's very important increasingly for the world of peacekeeping. And it's not just individuals and sort of infantry or police formations. Ghana has also deployed important specialized capabilities, engineering, logistics, we've heard. I would point also to an aviation unit that Ghana has deployed into the mission in Mali, Manusma. I think that's one of the very few cases of African countries deploying helicopter units into peace operations. And I would flag up again at the leaders peacekeeping summit in September last year. Ghana has also pledged to deploy a level two hospital to a peacekeeping mission in the future, and it's those specialized capabilities that are really gonna help, I think, missions become more effective. And the last point I want to sort of flag up about Ghana in particular is the point that Colonel mentioned about caveats. When the Ghanaians deploy peacekeepers to UN missions, they do so without caveats. That means, as the colonels mentioned, they'll follow the force commander's directives. That shouldn't need to be said, but unfortunately in the world of contemporary peace operations in Africa and elsewhere, caveats are unfortunately, I think, a major thorn in the side of many force commanders, as we've heard, contingents will often follow their national directives rather than orders from the force commander. So for all those sorts of reasons, I think the Colonel was being far too modest, really. We do need to learn a lot of lessons from the Ghanaian experience, and actually we need to replicate, I think, quite a few of them. Ghana, I think, on the African continent really gets close to a lot of the best practices we've seen out there. It's also, as we know, a country that's committed to training properly, and it's set up and been running now for a long time, the Kofi Annan Center. So for all these reasons, I think the world of peace operations does need more Garners. What now about my second job was to sort of think a bit more broadly of the lessons that we can learn from Africa, and I'm really gonna sort of not draw on directly, but there's gonna be a lot of overlap between what you said and what I said in terms of the major lessons. I identified eight that I just wanna quickly run through. I think the first one, as the Colonel already mentioned, is peace operations can't succeed if we don't align the means with the objectives. If we give peacekeepers increasingly broad mandates, but we don't give them sufficient capabilities to implement those mandates, the best we can get is a sort of partial success, and peacekeepers will struggle if we don't give them the capabilities they need. Secondly, in Africa specifically, I think it's become pretty clear over the last couple of decades that although the UN does dominate the peacekeeping landscape in terms of the numbers of missions and number of personnel deployed, nobody can do it alone and should do it alone in Africa. So partnership peacekeeping is really the central, I think, lesson that we've learned over the last couple of decades that we need to make partnerships work effectively. And the crucial partnerships, I think, are really between three multilateral organizations, that's the UN, the African Union, and increasingly now the European Union as well. Under that, there's the regional economic communities that I'll talk a little bit about later, but also France and the United States, for example, would be two very important bilateral partners. So we need to figure out what's the best division of labor between these multilateral organizations and key partner states. And I think it really should be one of partnership peacekeeping. This shouldn't be framed as sort of just capacity building from a group of external actors that know how to do peacekeeping, and are trying to build this up in a sort of deficient African continent. No, instead, we need to think about genuine partnerships and sharing experiences and knowledge in the best ways appropriate. Thirdly, I think a big lesson is that peace operations can't succeed unless they're part of a viable strategy for conflict resolution. You always alluded to already the importance of mediation and prevention. But if we don't have a viable means to actually resolve the conflict zones that these peace operations are deployed into, the best we can expect from our peacekeepers, I think, is something like damage limitation. If we don't figure out a way to put out the fires or stop the fires on the continent from happening, peace operations are at best a sort of wet blanket to douse the flames. And they can, of course, stem the most negative consequences of armed conflict. But unless we can solve and finish the conflict zones that they're deployed into, we have no exit strategy. We have no way of completing our mission successfully. Number four, I think we've learned a lot of interesting lessons about consent. And what I mean by this is, all UN peacekeeping operations with blue helmets, they only deploy where they're given the strategic consent of the host state government. But we've seen in a number of places over a number of years, what happens when consent may be given on paper, but there's not genuine cooperation coming forward from the host states. Now, I think here you're on a spectrum. In some cases, host governments have actually expelled missions. If we look back to Eritrea, Chad, Burundi, Sudan with un-miss, with 1S, at least yet peacekeeping operations have been asked to leave and forced out. They're also, though, more regularly threatened with expulsion if they don't conform to the preferences of host governments. We've seen Kabila in the DR Congo do this. We've seen Laurent Bagbo in Cote d'Ivoire do this. We've seen, unfortunately, the new regime in South Sudan threaten similar things as well. And even where peacekeepers are not kicked out, we've seen major headaches develop for them when host state governments have been the perpetrators of war crimes, really. And certainly, protection of civilian mandates have become particularly difficult where you've had countries like DR Congo, South Sudan, or Sudan as another example, of where these host states are actually the perpetrators of the mandated tasks that the peacekeepers are supposed to protect. So that, I think, is an important lesson. When and where and how do we make consent more like genuine cooperation? Fifth is to do with the African Union, as, again, as the colonel already pointed out. The AU from about 2003 onwards has certainly become more assertive in the world of peacekeeping in Africa, and rightly so, I think. And so one of the lessons is, again, back to partnerships. How can we give the African Union and help get the African Union to where it wants to be? Because the AU rightly is having a more important voice when it comes to taking authoritative positions on how to manage conflicts in Africa. But as we heard, and rightly so, the African peace and security architecture is still not finished yet, some bits more than others. And so the AU still needs actually a considerable amount of help from its partners and friends externally, particularly as we've heard already in the areas of planning, mission support, strategic lift to help deployment and rotations, and also money, which I'll talk about a bit more. So the AU is, I think, rightly becoming more assertive. It's not going away anytime soon, so we need to learn what it is the AU needs most from its partners. Sixth, I think, a big lesson is about the need to protect civilians and to do better at this very difficult task. I think my perspective would be, regardless of the official mandates that are given to operations, local populations of civilians always expect and want protection, regardless of what's written in the paper resolutions in New York. So peacekeepers are confronted with a very difficult challenge. This is not something we can ever achieve 100% of the time in 100% of the places. Civilian protection as a mandate always, I think, means failure in that there are gonna be civilians that peacekeepers cannot protect from various sources of threat. But how do we improve our levels of performance? That, again, as the colonels already mentioned, by better planning, better understanding of the environment, a better understanding of the threats facing civilians, a better knowledge of where and how we can deploy peacekeeping assets to those areas of urgent need would help, I think, and so that's an important lesson. But ultimately, number seven, I think for me is it's not so much a lesson as at least we're still having a very important debate about how and when to use military force in peace operations. I don't think, as I said, I don't think there's a clear lesson that has emerged per se, but I think it's a very important debate that we're getting to. When and how should military force be used in peace operations? And this is linked to the bigger question of what exactly do we mean by peace operations? What gets included under the umbrella? We've seen mandates of atrocity prevention, for example, civilian protection and R2P-related tasks. We've seen mandates that effectively are like counterinsurgency, mandates. We've seen mandates not quite explicitly but getting very close to counterterror-related tasks in Mali and Somalia in particular. We've seen mandates that are about really sort of state expansion and state consolidation where the state is not viewed as a neutral player and state expansion actively means conflict generation in certain parts of certain countries. So how and when to use military force in all those things and really how close a blurring of the boundaries that we're seeing between a thing called peace operations and something basically that's war-fighting or counterinsurgency. I said the AU was becoming more assertive and one of the ways we've seen it becoming more assertive is if you look at the last few authorized missions, we've basically seen the AU take on a sort of counterinsurgency slash war-fighting mode. We've got missions to fight al-Shabaab in Somalia. We've got missions to fight the LRA in Central Africa. We've got a mission coming online to fight Boko Haram around the Lake Chad Basin. We may in the future have a mission in Northern Mali to fight different insurgents there. So the blurring of the boundaries between peace operations, coin and CT, I think it's very important. And then finally, to finish, the money. Who's gonna pay? If we think peace operations are worthwhile and I think they, I certainly agree with the colonel, they are, we need to figure out how to do them more effectively, not to abandon the enterprise. Who exactly is going to pay for these operations and how? And I think one lesson that's come out very clearly here from the last 20 years or so is at the moment it's only the United Nations that has a sustainable financial system for its peacekeeping operations. It's only the UN that can endure operations for beyond a decade or so. Now, that brings challenges as well, but the African Union, the REX and other actors have not been able to find sustainable indigenous sources of funding. So if the lesson is that it's only the UN currently that has the finances to do this, the other lesson we need to take away from that, I think, is how can we generate other sources of funding, particularly from within the African continent itself to help make it the case that it's not just the UN that can sustain its missions, but also African missions can be sustained in the field. And I'll stop there. Well, thank you very much. Very much convergences here in many cases with the observations, Colonel, that you've made earlier. I do want to give everybody in the audience a chance to participate in this conversation, but I want to give the right of first refusal here, right of first question to Dr. Biko if you would launch us, and then we'll open it up to questions. Sure. One of the things that struck me, Colonel, in your presentation was you talked at length about early warning and then, really, the failure of early response. Some of it is certainly money, but I think some of it might be political. If we think back to Liberia 1990, it took about five years for all of ECOWAS to be on board. In the Mali situation, we also had the government not wanting an ECOWAS peacekeeping mission. So I guess one of my questions is, how does the continent, or even more specifically, how does the region, sort of get over some of these political challenges that are not allowing it to respond to some of these early warning signals that we're getting? Colonel, this is kind of an unfair question for you as a military man to be answering the political question that many of the politicians or the political operatives in this room ought to be addressing, but if you want to have a go at Dr. Biko's question, it certainly is an important question. Thanks a very much for the question. It's true that so far as L.O. One's sister has been saying it has got some political underlinings, but Liberia in particular, yes, it was political that most of the countries did not come on board as early as one expected, but then we must also understand that some of the countries were also supporting Charles Taylor, so they were not willing. And indeed, we're harboring and training rebels from those countries into Liberia. So, and then they had set up their own grouping. They didn't participate in the ECOWAS peace plan. They were not in the meeting. They objected and they refused. Dr. Kodewa and Bukina Faso clearly refused to send troops and then Senegal only brought in their troops later on. But then despite various ceasefires, agreement signed with Charles Taylor, these countries still didn't come on board. Of course, there is a historical underpaint to it and I just want to edge a number of people to read my book. If you read the book, you will get the historical background, why this happened. But clearly it was a political, I agree, it was political, but it has to do with taking size with the various groupings, some were really supporting the rebels. Mali clearly is an issue of funding. Now, it was an issue of funding because I even had a student who was on the MSS program. He was working with the ECOWAS standby force. He had to withdraw because they were put on standby to move to Mali. He couldn't complete his course. But he could have completed the course with his mates before even the French intervention. But yes, ECOWAS couldn't move just because of funding. The commitment was there by the troops that were set up, but where was the funding for them to... Now, you could imagine the confusion that happened. ECOWAS, before the French, just at the time the French went in, ECOWAS went in to line the operation. They handed over to the EU and the EU within weeks handed over to the UN. This was total confusion. But I think that the situation could have been, they could have intervened much earlier. They had the early warning signals, that everything was indeed the Confucian International Peacekeeping Service and they wrote a policy paper on what was going to happen in Mali much earlier, about members before it happened. So the early signal was there, but the political commitment, especially the funding issue, was a problem so far as ECOWAS and that was the point that Paul made. The funding issue is key. And I was very happy, brother, as the last point, that it's just icing everything. The funding is a very important issue unless we get about going around the funding issue or single-indoor problems. Thank you very much. So let me open it up to questions. We have microphones. Please use the microphones because without them, those who are following us online will not be able to hear your questions. Please identify yourselves and please do keep your questions brief. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. My name is Nia Kuete. I work with the African Immigrant Caucus here. Can I thank you very much? I was born in Ghana. I had nothing to do with Ghana's record, but I'll take the credit here in Washington. Thank you. You mentioned, I mean, the angle I'm looking at is the both prevention and the inadequacy of forces. And I'm coming at it at this tangent. Should we be scrutinizing more which countries give soldiers? And in particular, given the work I do here in Washington, Ambassador Moose, forgive me, but I was wondering if you can comment. Oftentimes when setting African countries which I think are undemocratic have offered troops we've heard in Washington, well, you know, we are friends with them because they send troops. And I think Washington should make a better effort to at least exhaust personnel from democratic countries and the number of countries in Africa which are democratic are increasing. So what do you think of the idea that we shouldn't just take anybody who offers it, we should look at their own record because sometimes they are doing things that will later turn their own countries into conflict situations. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's not often that the moderator gets put on the spot for it, but I'll do my best. But go ahead, Colonel Wancher. You want to take the first stab at this? Well, sir, in principle, I may agree. So far, good governments in the world is concerned may agree that democratic countries won't be scared. And also another side of it. If some of these countries are exposed to that, probably they can bring a lot of examples from the international community and artists. And probably these countries that we think that they are not democratic could ensue democratic, probably, channels of re-establishing themselves. That is what I would say for that. But it is true that autocratic governments easily dispense of troops to go on peacekeeping. And I will tell you that in Ghana's history, in the various times, the major various times that we went on peacekeeping. And I can tell you in Liberia, if we didn't have military governments at the period, probably the troops would not have been sent. Because Babangira was a hero state in Nigeria at that time. Rawlings was a military hero state of Ghana at that time. Now, to take that decision, they took on the spot, the decision that sent troops, they must go and fight and extricate people. And they were able to do it. Today, Ghana and Nigeria are democratic. They have democratic governments. Stable democratic government with equal, successful transitions. So I can say that other countries which are not democratic can take a cue from Ghana and Nigeria. Paul, please. Yeah, just have a point, I mean, I agree. I think it's important to remember, again, institutionally, UN missions and AU missions, democracy is not a criteria for membership of either the UN or the AU. So at that fundamental level, I think it would be unwise to sort of set a gatekeeping function to say only one type of governance country would be allowed to deploy to these missions. But I think the broader question we sort of need to ask is I think it's right that also what you said, we shouldn't just have to accept whatever troops are offered to missions. And I think the way around this here is we need a broader pool of troop and police contributing countries so that what the UN or the African Union can do is when they're faced with a particular mission in Somalia, Burundi or Mali or wherever, they don't just have to accept what they're given if they're trying to find 12,000 troops and 3,000 police. What we would like ideally is a situation where both the UN and AU could be selective and quite choosy about who are the right type of soldiers, who are the right type of police, do they speak the right languages, have they had the right types of training, do they come with the right types of capabilities? So I think it's not just a democracy versus non-democracy type issue. It's a broader issue of what are the right capabilities, knowledge, really training and backgrounds for troop contributing countries and how do we allow the UN and the AU to be more selective about those things which means as you said earlier, we can't just rely on a relatively small number of countries to provide most of the UN or African Union's peacekeepers. And indeed, this was of course the significance of President Obama's initiative in the fall in which he invited a number of both actual troop contributing countries but also a prospective potential troop contributing countries precisely for the purpose of enlarging that pool of countries that are actively engaging and willing to participate in peacekeeping, precisely to give both the UN and others a greater political choice about who should be engaged in these kinds of operations. So as a practical matter, I think that's where this conversation needs to go if we're going to be successful in the future. Right here, yes, we already have a microphone so I'm gonna give you the floor. That's okay. Thanks. So my name is Kyle Dietrich. I manage the Africa and Peacekeeping Program at an organization called Civic, the Center for Civilians in Conflict. We work with militaries around civilian protection. So a question that came up with both of your presentations, Colonel and Professor Williams, is this idea of caveats and unity of command. And I'll be honest, when we look at what happened in Malacal in South Sudan, questions in the Eastern DRC. I'm wondering how you can, obviously this goes back to political will, lots of reasons why troops, countries contribute troops, but how can you incentivize action? And what consequences can you realistically create, whether they're political or otherwise, rotating troops out? And then how can organizations like ours that work in the space apply pressure? Because we see the issues, but ultimately we can do all the training we want, but if troops don't have the will and the national capitals that they're ultimately reporting to aren't enforcing the mandate that they have, which is largely defined around protection of civilians, we're hamstrung, we don't know kind of where the starting point is, thanks. I think it's an important question and the question is why is it that the two contributors behave the way they do in terms of not respecting the uniformity of command, the unity of command, and what can be done to incentivize them to be more participatory in the unity that is required for the effectiveness of an operation? I'm going to give you the first floor and then maybe Paul and bychew as well. It has actually been one of the biggest problems and as I alluded earlier on, so far as Virginia led peacekeeping operations on sand, we don't get this problem really in its head so much. That is because of the unity or purpose of those countries going to perform. But then it comes on when you have a bigger force like the U.F. and I've had an experience where we've had this problem. So the U.N. sometimes is being forced and skewed not to properly rotate its force command is probably because of the so that very powerful nations within the theater are holding this command so that we will not have that problem. But I think that there should be replications, there should be probably sanctions that should be adopted. I was reading the U.N. hard panel and they made some strong recommendations in that regard. They identified that as a basic problem. So far as U.N. operations, peacekeeping operations are concerned. So there's a need for certain sanctions even including a spending of contingents if they do not actually go by this. But then the question is, if the U.S. is involved, the U.K. is involved, France is involved and they do submit themselves to the force commander or the head of the mission, will you have the moral right to expel them? That is a question that will continue this time. For the political will to this defense point. Yeah, I mean, all good points. I would just say one step back again first. So caveats come in many different forms and are adopted for different reasons. So sometimes it might be geographically a contingent is not supposed to deploy to a particular part of the country. It might be that type of caveat or it might be the type of caveat that says, we don't want our contingent to engage in risky operations that might lead to casualties on our part. Sometimes there may be constitutional reasons. I'm thinking Japan, Germany, for example. There may be domestic legal reasons why there are certain restrictions put on operations in the field. So I think if that's the starting point, they come in several different forms. Some of these then are written into the MOUs that the troop contributing countries signed with the U.N. So the U.N. is not always blindsided about, let's say, the Koreans in unifilial. Yeah, we know they want to be in a certain place and this is not that much of a problem. We can work around it. The real problem are the caveats that are sort of secret, if you like, that are not written in the MOUs. And we only find these out when a force commander's orders are ignored, disobeyed, these types of things. So how do we deal with that sort of second category, which I think is the most problematic category of caveats? There I think we just need to have a more open and honest political debate about making sure everybody's on the same page about what exactly the mandate entails in terms of the proactive responsibilities of peacekeepers. And that's why I was alluding to earlier, we've said civilian protection's important for a long time now, but we need to be much more clear and explicit in cases, as you mentioned, like the Malacals of this world. What exactly are the obligations of peacekeepers beyond the static defence of positions? But actually the proactive obligations. And if we get countries on the same page, I think with the mandates, there should be less of an excuse or less of a reason to justify putting these types of caveats in the field operationally. But there's no way around just we've got a, that's a political fight, that's a political battle, we've got to generate the political will to say, if we're going to commit to an operation, we know what we're getting into and we're willing to follow the force commander. And I think it's also fair to say that to the extent that we are successful in enhancing the capabilities of peacekeeping missions, that national governments will have greater confidence in the ability of those missions to conduct those missions properly and less reserved, therefore, about making, if you will, a total commitment to a immunity of commands in order to carry out that mission. Where do we have a mic next? Right here, yes. Thank you. Good morning, my name is Kwame Ado. I'm a former U.S. Army soldier and currently working for the Department of Defense. Pick up a little bit. My name is Kwame Ado. I'm a former U.S. Army soldier and currently working for the Department of Defense. My question is for all of you. Once the peacekeepers get back from their deployment, are there any ways that Johannes' skill says that they acquire over there on these deployments to help build the communities that they come back home to? Or are they just placed back in the units and go about business as usual? Because I think the exposure they get out there puts them in a very unique position that they can harness these skills to work in the government and in business or even in the private sector. So that's my question to anybody. Thank you. So this goes to the question of both, how do we prepare and share that knowledge of peace operations with others and their contingents? Well, I suspect the experience varies widely. I think that peacekeepers have played a very responsive role so far as they're developing on their countries' concern. You know, one of the roles of peacekeepers are once the start of this humanitarian assistance when they are in the field. And of late, you see a number of peacekeepers, especially in Africa and particularly in Ghana, playing that role when they come back. They have inculcated the spirit of humanitarian assistance from outside and replicated in their hands, which they were not doing. So you see a number of peacekeepers coming when they come once in a year or twice in a year. They are donating blood to hospitals. They are helping communities in building schools and what have you. That has been something that I'm doing. The other thing too is that elections is a very key issue in every country and conflicts in every country that we talk about. Ghana has been very peaceful because, I would say because of the level of our involvement in peacekeeping. We have seen atrocities happen out of conflicts. We have seen people dying and running away with our houses. People have lived, people have done, where their families are. The case of Rwanda that we saw, the case of Liberia that we saw, indeed, on a rabbi in Liberia, the first confront of dead bodies and the scent of cacas. People could, we even lost our appetite to it. Now, if we have had this lesson, now what is the message that we are sending to our people? We will tell our people that, look, this is what we have seen. If we run into problems, this is the implications so far as peace in our country is concerned. So this is the message that we have been drumming in the country and when there are instances of insecurity, we intervene and we do not intervene also using force. We are, because of the skills we have learned in peacekeeping, we know because the security of the citizens is more paramount than the security of a government. So it is important for the citizens to be more secure and the paramount is for the citizens to be more secure. And let's also remember that based on peacekeeping, without security, no country can develop. So the priority is security in the country and without development, the government of the day cannot even provide the living conditions of its people. So that has really helped and replicated so far as our country is concerned. That's interesting. Thank you. Observations back, yes. Thank you. My name is Kerry Lajaness. I'm the principal of LaJune Consulting. And Colonel, I want to thank you first of all. I was very fortunate to be able to participate in the very last phases of the West Africa Disaster Preparedness Initiative in Liberia and with ECOWAS and also the Way Forward Conference. And for those of you who don't know about this, I'd like to take just a second to make some observations and then ask some questions. In that, prior to that, I was a AAAS fellow working for a state and foreign ops appropriator, worked very heavily on Ebola, international development, global health. And I work at the interface of all of those things with peacekeeping and food security, global health and disaster and crisis preparedness. The WADP program, I think was one of the best expenditures of money by the U.S. government that I've ever seen. And it was funded by the U.S. government with funds from Department of Defense. So my question is, where we have these things that are going to impact conflict? And we have a great model, like we had with the Kofi Annan Center and NADMO and Department of Defense. Can we look at also engaging the private sector number one and number two, with the WADP program in Liberia where they're looking at decentralization of their disaster responses, they trained 467 Liberians, about 30 people from each county. And all of those people were, that exercise and training was facilitated by African facilitators that were trained at Kofi Annan. It's a wonderful model. I'm wondering what you think about using this model to address all the shocks and stressors that can lead to conflict. I was visiting with five Paramount Chiefs in Liberia. First time in history, they had brought six tribes together in one location to have conversation and they saw that as a really essential way of doing peacekeeping. Thank you. Thank you. Is this an effort that you're familiar with? Have you had some experience? Thank you very much for at least lifting the name of Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center at this stage. I want to emphasize that this training was done with the support of the United States government that African funding was provided in that respect. And it has been very refreshing and the reports and the feedbacks that we have got out of the evaluations has been very tremendous. Because of that, we are engaging with African and the US government. The delegation came here for us to expand in the areas that you are talking about. Indeed, they want us to even expand beyond West Africa and even beyond Africa so that we can go into other areas of security that can help prevent conflict. But on the lining factor, again, is funding. What are we able to get the no funding to do that? And like she mentioned, we used, we're able to train African facilitators and we're able to use them. We've now be able to train facilitators of all the countries that came into the, from West Africa who came there. Currently, there's the last two countries that are doing the training. And we think that this is the way forward and we want to use this platform to appeal to Donis and especially like she mentioned the private sector should get involved so that we should be able to make Africa a very peaceful place to live. Thank you very much. Make a couple of points. Just on the private sector point and then a bit about health and peacekeeping intersection. So the private sector doesn't get really in the center of the spotlight, but peace operations as we know them. You know, peace, sorry, private firms are an integral part of making peace operations work for a long time. It's just a bit of the camp security, the logistics, where's our food and drink and all these important things. So the private sector's in there and has been for a long time, but we can always think about more innovative relationships on the health nexus with peacekeeping. Yeah, I think this is very important, particularly for Africa. We have now our first examples of what we're called healthkeeping rather than peacekeeping missions in West Africa, Unmir and the African Union's mission against Ebola. I think we're basically a lesson we need to have a better understanding of what worked well from that crisis and what didn't and what lessons we can take because it's 100% guaranteed this is gonna happen again. We're gonna need to do it again if it gets heaven forbid into sort of a big urban setting rather than the more rural settings we saw in West Africa. We're really gonna be in trouble here. So yes, I think it's a very currently understudied but important area. We need to understand how peace operations as currently configured can be reconfigured to help with this sort of public health agenda as well. And by the same token, the respective roles of both local actors and international actors and how we respond to those kinds of crises. One here and then I'll take another one there. Thank you so much. My name is Jamal Uresh from the Embassy of the United Nations. I guess I would agree with the panelists regarding that we need to identify the link between the peacekeeping operations on the ground and the peace process and the conflict resolution on the area. So my question that whether the peacekeeping operation on the ground, they have like kind of assessment to the situation the security situation and the political situation on the ground and whether they make any recommendations whether monthly, annually and how that works giving the, that South Africa now decided to withdraw the troops from Darfur. So that based on what? Because they see that there's no need for them to stay longer in Darfur. The second question, Colonel, that you speak about the efficiency of the troops and I would like you to comment if possible about the incident happened in Darfur when the Nigerian battalion surrendered their weapons to the rebels group when they were attacked. So the question is that because of the mandate or because of the inefficiency or because of something else? Thank you so much. Very specific questions and I don't know. Colonel, if you have some knowledge of that. I don't know the details about that but there have been a number of incidents that have happened so far as the seizure of troops are concerned in peace operations and that goes to the point of the two of us made. If you don't actually understand the nature of the conflict you don't understand the nature of people that you're going to operate against for you to be prepared. Now, how well equipped are we? Now, if you look at Darfur, Darfur's, the operation in Darfur and he made a point on that that our mandates are not very clear so far as protection is concerned. How are mandates supposed to be so far as situations in Darfur are concerned? Now, let's remember that the Darfur operation started at the EU mission and we're devolved into a hybrid mission. That's alone. There was some kind of probably an irregular transition and that is a question. Now, we've been advocating, a number of people have been advocating for robust peacekeeping mandates and probably that is the best way to go. You go, you have a robust peacekeeping mandate. Now, you can lower the guards so far as things are going well and when mediation and conflict, resolution mechanisms are going side-by-side conflict management. But then, when there is a problem, you can easily switch off. That is the type of flexibility we need in our mandates to be able to switch into a robust type of mandate. However, there have been a situation in La Colimoire where you know they had that opportunity to switch over. Yet, after the election, they couldn't contain the situation and we ran into problems. Now, how do we maintain this? You need training, you need to get the two contributing countries involved. You need to sign memorandum of understanding based on collaboration with the two contributing countries so that you understand that you need contingents that are well-equipped, properly-equipped contingents. Now, most of African countries really cannot be able to deploy with equipment that are required of them. I mean, very few countries in Africa can do that. Then, you need a support of Western countries, like I mentioned earlier on, to also support in that regard or to provide the equipment. But then the bottom line is the equipment, if you want to have a very robust type of operational readiness in the field. The political and security assessments are done in all peace missions. There are regular reforms that are sent and assessments are made to the Secretary General. The Secretary General also makes this assessment known to the Security Council. So these assessments are made. Indeed, there are certain situations, there are certain cases where the missions have predicted certain things that are likely to happen and happen. Like in Rwanda, it was written down. In Rwanda, the science were written that we could sense. I was in Rwanda before the genocide. You could sense that something was going to happen. Yes, we couldn't prevent the situation. The issue is the mandates that we have on the ground and whether proper assessments have been made before the mandates are formulated. I'm going to take two final questions, one here and then Sofia there. And then we'll... Oh, I'm sorry. This... Oh, sorry. Sorry. Thank you very much. My name is Kenneth Johnson, Principal of DEBKANA, which focuses on Cultural and Economic Development in Africa. My question to you, Colonel, is that I see the structural deficiency in many of the peacekeeping is one in which soldiers are deployed without understanding the fundamental sociocultural topography or terrain, if you will, of the place. And I think you alluded to that a number of times. And I think it's not just within the, like, ECOMOG in West Africa or the AU or even in the United States with ACOTA, which is a very good initiative, but there's this lack of pre-deployment sociocultural training understanding. So my question is, assuming you agree with me, how do we address that? Because I'm a strong opponent of that cultural aspect. Thank you. Let me take one more question and then that'll be the final question. Yes, please. Hi, Sofia, a consultant here at USAP. Thank you very much for your presentation. One of the points that you raised in your presentation was related to the issue of mandate. This question of having proper planning and proper mandates. And one of the recommendations of the HIPAA report was this idea of having sequence mandate, whereby mandates would have a set of broad priorities that they would need to accomplish before moving on to another set of priorities. So I think this is a very good idea on paper, but I can think of many ways in which this could go wrong. So I would just appreciate any thoughts that you have on this idea of having a sequence mandate. So two very challenging questions here. Yes, yes. I'll start with the question. It is true that peacekeepers deployed must have an understanding. They must be trained on the social or the culture of the people where they are going to be deployed. And I'll give you some instances to better this point. In Lebanon, for instance, you need to understand the culture, especially in southern Lebanon, of the people. Otherwise, at the instance of your deployments, there could be a vote of no confidence as far as your deployment is concerned. Now you must understand what the people are doing culturally so that you'll be able to align yourself to them. Otherwise, they can even attack them. Indeed, there is a contingent that will grow from Lebanon because they didn't respect the culture of the people and they were attacked. And because of that, they lost its duties in broad daylight and that country took a political decision to grow from Lebanon. Now, if you are in Lebanon for example, you must understand Haram. You want to understand that the people don't drink in an open. You must also understand certain basic things about them. You should respect their muktas and respect them in getting them involved in the issues. I'll give you an instance in 2006 where I was deployed as a command officer in Lebanon. And then the Italian battalions were deployed alongside in the Western sector. In that particular instance, they came with quick impact projects, probably with donations from their country, from the government. Now they decided that they were going to construct rules without consulting the people. Now what happened was that any time that they were driving around on patrols, the locals were throwing stones, the youth were throwing stones at them. So they command all the Italian battalions came to me and asked me, why is it that they are not throwing stones at Ghanians and they are throwing stones at Italians? And I told them that, have you visited the mukta? Have you announced yourself to the mukta that you are in their territory? Go to the mukta, drink tea with them, call them for your social events, organize games with them, and then tell them that you want to construct a road. They should give you the priorities. Not that you decided we are going to construct this road. The people must be involved. And if you respect that culture, you don't have a problem. One other issue in Lebanon, which is very critical, is that you, for instance, do not drink in an open. That is their culture, so far as the Muslim culture is concerned. So with their outcome, you can drink, but avoid drinking and opening that to affect their culture. These are the basic things, so far. And these are very simple basic culture experiences that one must. There are several of them that one must learn depending on the environment that you are going to deploy. Now, with the HIPAA report concerning the sequence... Sequencing, yeah. ...concerning the sequence of mandates, it's true that they've made that recommendation. The question that probably we need to discuss is whether it's practical. There are certain difficult situations that one can deploy. You may have an intention that this is how you are going to deploy and this is the sequence on which the mandate of food. But you may arrive and the situation will change. Liberia, for instance, Ecomoc decided to deploy in Liberia. The initial objective was to evacuate West African nationals. But on arrival in Liberia, we were faced with fire. Now, a world had to go around immediately that. The mandate that we were coming with has been changed. Now we need to fight to survive, to be able to occupy our territory. In such a situation, how do you find yourself? So I think that it is very important for the planners to do very critical conflict analysis before they decide on the mandates. The sequencing can be a solution, but it must be very realistic and it must be practicable. And involvement of the True Condividing Council is key. Involving all stakeholders, so far as actors, so far as this is concerned. And Elio and William mentioned the involvement. There are certain key actors that one cannot run away from. He talked about the UN, so far Africa operating percent in the EU, and he mentioned the U.S. and France and how are the U.K. because of the experience of the UN operations in Sierra Leone. These are countries that will always initiate U.S. Security Council resolution for peace missions. And if you realize these are the three countries because the U.K. has an interest in Sierra Leone, that was one of its colonial territories. And it is very key for us to understand this under my name. Maybe you have something to add. Thanks, John. Well, did you have any final thoughts? Do you want to add to either of those questions now? Dr. Pico. No, I just, I think you've really laid out a sort of rich template on lessons for peacekeeping. Yeah, and now we will all have to rush out and buy and read your book, but unfortunately did not arrive in time for our event here today. But I want to thank you, Colonel, for your very insightful observations about the challenges that we're facing. We know that this is difficult terrain, but we also know it's vitally important terrain because in the absence of effective peacekeeping missions, those of us in the peacebuilding field cannot conduct our work. We need that presence as the context within which we can carry out our operations. But more importantly, our colleagues in the human rights field are needed because of the fundamental importance to protecting civilians and noncombatants and in conflict zones. Are humanitarian colleagues needed? Because without it, they can't conduct their work. So this is a vitally important international instrument. And we have an opportunity this year by virtue of the HIPPO report, by virtue of the President's initiative in New York and Fall to focus attention on what needs to be done to enhance the capability and the performance of international peacekeeping generally, to look at the ways in which international peacekeeping, UN peacekeeping, and regional peacekeeping can cooperate and collaborate more effectively. And how we can in fact preserve this instrument into the future because we know, if you just look at the number of fragile states on that list, we know that at any given moment, there is going to be need and demand and requirement for the international community to respond. So I wanna thank you for your contributions to this discussion. And I only wish, my only wish is that we had another couple of hours to explore and to mine this. And thank you all for attending and participating. Thank you. This is Mike, did you hear much of that? Yes, yes indeed.