 My name is Jim Roof and I'm the Senior Program Officer for Civilian Military Affairs here at USIP's Academy. On behalf of our co-host, the Folk of Bernadette, an International Challenges Forum, we'd like to welcome you to USIP and to the Strategic Communications for a New Era in Peace Operations Challenges Forum Workshop. We have an exciting program filled with many experts from the Strategic Communications field. Before I ask USIP's president to open the workshop, we'd like to share just a couple administrative remarks. First, as many of you probably already experienced, we have a number of team members that are located out in the hallway in the registration area. So if there's anything we can do to make your time here a little bit more enjoyable, please don't hesitate to ask us. Biographies. We have a packed day today, so in order to maximize and make the most efficient use of our time, we're going to just probably lightly touch on the biographies of the individuals here and the featured speakers and the panelists. But if you'd like to know more, their full biographies are inside your packets. Question and answers. So once the panel's portion of our session is completed, there's plant time for question and answer. Well, if you haven't received already, you will. Some cards for which you can write your questions down on, and then we will take them and then we will get them to the panelists. And all you have to do is take your cards and then just pass them to the outside of your row, and then we will collect them from there. Another important administrative remark tonight, beginning at 5.30, there will be a reception at the Washington Marriott Georgetown Hotel. It's on 22nd Street, and I think there's some directions, but we can get those for you if you so need them. Okay, that said, it's now my privilege to introduce the President of USIP, Ms. Nancy Lindberg. On February 2nd, Nancy Lindberg was sworn in as President of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Prior to joining USIP, she served as the Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistant, or DACA, at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she directed the efforts focused on crisis prevention, response, recovery, and transition. Ms. Lindberg led the DACA teams in response to the ongoing Syria crisis, the Sahel and Horn of Africa droughts, Arab Spring, the Ebola response, and numerous other global crises. Ms. Lindberg has spent most of her career working on issues of transition democracy and civil society, conflict and humanitarian response, and prior to joining USAID, she was the President of Mercy Corps. Please join me in welcoming Ms. Nancy Lindberg. Thank you, Jim, and welcome everybody to USIP. It's a pleasure to have everyone here, and thank you for battling the heat and the traffic. As Jim said, we're absolutely delighted here at USIP to be able to host this very important conference. USIP was chartered 30 years ago with the mission of finding practical solutions for preventing, mitigating, and recovering from conflict, and connecting, doing with teaching and learning. This conference is squarely, squarely in our mission. And I'd like to thank our co-hosts and recognize Annika Hilding-Norberg, the Director and Founder of the Challenges Forum, and Mr. Sven Ericsolder, the Director General of the Fokker Bernadotte Academy, and our many US partners for coming together on this important effort. I'd also like to welcome many of you who've traveled from other countries, who've come from across the globe from numerous organizations, government, military, business. This is exactly the configuration of people we need to tackle this issue. And I understand that we have a number of people joining us online. And I would encourage all of you who are working the Twitter sphere to use hashtag peace comms as a part of the overall conversation. So we were very happy to host in March in partnership with the UN Foundation, a conversation with members of the high-level independent panel on peace operations, which was a very, very vigorous, very engaged conversation. And this is an extraordinarily well-timed event with the release yesterday of the high-level panel report. We also had last week a report from UNHCR that we are now seeing a record level of 60 million people who are currently displaced, either within or outside their country's borders. So at a time where peacekeepers are increasingly called upon to keep the peace where there is still active conflict, and where you are seeing complicated missions that rapidly change over time, I saw this last fall in Liberia where the peacekeepers were suddenly in the midst of an Ebola epidemic. We see it in places like South Sudan where you are quickly transitioning from a country that is on a pathway to peace to terrible conflict and hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge on your compound. This is a time where we really need to enable our peacekeeping operations to fully embrace the idea of full-spectrum operations. And strategic communications are an absolutely critical part of that. So I want to really commend the organizers of this workshop and all of you for the work that you are poised to do. This is a part of a very important conversation and hopefully a part of really moving forward so that we have the kind of peacekeeping operations that are equal to an ever more complicated and conflict-affected set of crises. I look forward to continuing to be a part of this conversation and USIP is very eager and happy to have the partnership with the Folko Bernadette Academy and the Challenges Forum and others as we move this conversation forward. And to get us underway it's now my great pleasure to welcome Mr. Sven Ericsolder. Am I saying that right? Sven Ericsolder forward. Sven Ericsolder brings considerable experience both with the private sector and inside the Swedish government to his current position as Director General of the Folko Bernadette Academy. So he's well positioned to help lead this conversation forward. Please join me in welcoming him to the podium. Thank you Nancy and good morning to all of you. It is really a great pleasure for me as well to welcome you all to this Challenges Forum workshop that we at the Folko Bernadette Academy has the great privilege to host together with the United States Institute for Peace on this very timely topic of strategic communications for the new era of UN peace operations. I have to say that personally I feel also very strongly about strategic communications in the context of peace operations and I do that mainly for three different reasons. First, as the Swedish Agency for Peace, Security and Development under the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Sweden, the development of critical tools in support of UN peace operations is really at the heart of our work and our commitment. And second, doing so together with partners notably within the framework of the Challenges Forum also confirms our commitment to and believe in multilateralism for more effective peace operations. And last and third, I think strategic communications is a topic that I have of course a personal interest in, not only because as Nancy said that I have previously worked in this area both in the private and in the public sector, but more importantly because I really believe that strategic communications has never ever been more important than it is today when we are talking about the United Nations and peace operations. I think a central tournament for UN peace operations to be remind is if you are not seen then you do not exist. If you are not seen then you do not exist. So not being seen I think makes you vulnerable because it is by being seen that you can gain confidence, trust and also support from your respective clients, from your constituencies or otherwise target audiences. And if you are not seen then not only will your work have very limited impact but also when times get tough you are not likely to ride out the storm. And if you are not seen then you will not attract the support and investment then you need to persist and you are less likely to be missed and the cost of losing you will not trump the cost of keeping you floating. It's really important to be seen. And in fact communications is key for I think a peace operations accountability in relation to those that it deploys of course as well as in relation to those that it is deployed to protect. But communications also provides accountability in relation to those who deploy peacekeepers and make peace operations happen. That is both of course member states and the United Nations itself. And this is why we need to think about communications and how to communicate in a strategic manner in order to win the hearts and minds and thereby also secure national and local ownership of the process. For these reasons there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that strategic communications will be at the center of the implementation work that now follows in the review process that the UN peace operations is currently going through. And I think it's also clear that the UN has to become better at communicating peacekeeping mandates but also how they are implemented, how they are translated into practice. And this has to be done continuously and in innovative ways at the global and national but also of course at local levels but not necessarily in the same way across all those levels. Strategic communication I think is also a cost effective mean for managing expectations and to inform more realistic mandates and implementation plans. I think also equally important to external communication is internal communication. And in fact I would argue that in order to do external communication strategically internal communication is key. The UN is as we all know a complex organization for obvious reasons. It has 193 member states and cooperates with a number of regional and non-governmental organizations and it has the most important but also the most complex I would say responsibilities of all, namely to save succeeding generations from war, reaffirm fundamental human rights and respect for international law and promote social progress and better standards of life. As such in order for the UN to communicate in a coherent, confident and therefore also in a convincing manner it has to be clear about the message. I think this all sounds of course very complicated and we cannot hide from the fact that the UN has a long, long way I think to go when it comes to strategic communications. And the first challenge is perhaps to ensure that all member states share the commitment to this issue. And I think this workshop we are attending here today is an important step in that direction and we are therefore very, very encouraged by the impressive panels that we will hear today and the wide range of different types of experiences that we have here in the room to discuss the questions for the cause of the day. And personally I'm absolutely sure that this afternoon's working group discussions will result in targeted and realistic recommendations that can play an important role in the second stage of the review process and maybe the most important part of the process, namely implementation. So dear friends, once again I would like to thank you Nancy and I would like to thank the US Institute of Peace for co-hosting this workshop with us in this really, really beautiful building. And of course I would also like the Challenges Forum Secretariat for making this seminar happen. And finally, I would like to thank all of you very much for attending this seminar and I'm really looking forward to participating in the discussions throughout the day. So thank you very much and may the good work begin. Thanks. Thank you. This is cooperation. Your Excellencies, partners, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. The purpose of the Challenges Forum remains steadfast over the past two decades. Our mission is to explore and develop thinking and concepts on how to better analyze, plan, conduct and evaluate complex peace operations. We encourage action on the findings we generate in January concluding a two-year multi-strand project. The Challenges Forum partner organizations from 22 countries, in the picture here represented by our India and British, Pakistani and American colleagues, presented a report on the theme designing mandates and capabilities for future peace operations and the report contained a range of findings. We were very pleased to have the Vice-Chair of the Independent Panel participate in that event. In relation to strategic communications, the Challenges Forum partners found that we need to adopt new tools and technologies in peace operations as a means for tackling emerging threats, not least in order to enhance the security of peacekeepers in the field. The application of modern technology to peace operations aims to understand and influence current-day mission environments in two fundamental ways. First, by gaining trust and support by communicating with host country populations. Second, by improving situational awareness through information gathering, analysis and dissemination among staff. The report continues, while traditional communication tools remain important, new and social media have the potential to improve both the scope and effectiveness of peace operations communication efforts. Correctly used, these tools enable missions to both take a more strategic approach to communications, as well as to enhance the ability of missions to react better to events as they unfold. And finally, the report found that new and social media enable interactive two-way dialogue not only provides a source of information to the public, but can also generate support for mission goals. And in the partnership, we came to the conclusion that there was a need to convene a workshop exactly like this one, bringing in also the business and strategic communications experts as much as our traditional constituency, the international peace operations community. And what better place to have this workshop than here in Washington DC and at the United States Institute of Peace. The purpose of our workshop here today is to, one, explore and if possible, initiate new and innovative thinking in concept for strategic communications that can be applied in support of peace operations. And second, to mobilize support for the prioritization of strategic communications as a key enabler to alleviate the challenges facing modern peace operations and to better protect our men and women peacekeepers in the field. And third, we hope to contribute to the ongoing important process for review and reform that is currently ongoing. And as it happens, as Mrs. Lindberg mentioned, our workshop could not come at the more timely time. The U.N. Secretary General's high-level panel on peace operations here represented by Ambassador Pascoe presented their much anticipated report just now with a specific section and recommendation on strategic communication which confirms the relevance of the topic we're meeting here to discuss. The report I found is immensely rich and loaded with thoughtful and constructive and concrete proposals for enhancing 21st century peace operations. Here we will seek to zoom in on the part of the report that deals with strategic communications and what needs to be done. And what does that mean? Which innovative concept the methods are required? What can we learn from the business and strategic communications expert community in order to realize the potential of strong and fit for purpose strategic communications? And at one workshop, what we choose to do here today matters. We are as focused on bringing the findings of today's workshop forward as we are in making the workshop happen in the first place. And for those of you that are new to the Challenges Forum, I will spend just two minutes on mentioning a couple of examples of Challenges Forum partnership contributions to major and concrete developments. Contribution to the U.N. led development of the principles and guidelines for peacekeeping. The DPCO and our Jordanian partners in cooperation with the Pearson Center and the FBA brought together the five top trip contributing countries to ensure the ability of the global south to properly and fully influence the finalization of the U.N. principles and guidelines document. The Challenges Forum study on consideration for mission leadership in U.N. peacekeeping operationalizes the U.N. peacekeeping principles and guidelines. And since 2011, it has been used by all U.N. senior mission leadership courses as well as by regional organizations and partner states across the world. The picture at the bottom was taken, I think, last week at the UNSML in Cairo. The Challenges, sorry, and the final example is the first strategic thematic guidelines for U.N. police peacekeeping is finally coming to fruition. And the workshop hosted by our Norwegian partners, NUPI, focused on U.N. police and capacity building and development, which is now much thanks to the strong support and sustained support from Norway of U.N. policing turning into the first thematic guidelines. And before closing, I would like to take this opportunity to extend our warm welcome to Canada as the 22nd partner of the Challenges Forum, building on an earlier valuable partnership that we enjoyed with the Pearson Center. I look forward to the deliberations here today. We look forward to working with the outcome and to make sure it is put to good use, taking into account forthcoming reviews, coming out of the high-level panel or review of the peacebuilding architecture as well as the review of the implementation of Security Council 1325 on women, peace and security. We will continue working with the outcomes of this workshop in partnership with our organizers and in parallel to developments being generated by the international community at the force generation consultation in Jakarta and the peacekeeping summit in New York. In October, our Challenges Annual Forum 2015 will be hosted by Armenia in Jerevan. A Challenges Forum workshop in Addis Ababa will further develop and test the findings of this workshop towards the field. But here and now, thank you the United States Institute of Peace under the leadership of Nancy Lindbergh for hosting this important workshop. Our thanks also goes to the broader American partnership that have been involved in the planning of the workshop. I would say an innovative model of whole-of-government cooperation with the think-tank approach, which also includes the U.S. Army War College European Stability Operations Institute, an effort led by Bill Flavin, the Department of State Effort Partnership, led by Victoria Holt and the Department of Defense led by Kristi Hand. And thank you, Folke Banalot Academy, forthcoming with your support to co-host this event. Thank you. Finally, this workshop will not have taken place if it was not for the efforts and engagement of UMP's keeping, and in particular, Nick Bernback, of the Public Affairs Section, who has both championed the issue and served as an essential and dynamic driver of this project. Having first galvanized the issue in partnership discussions at our workshop at the UN Read and Service Centre in Ntab and then having stayed the course with us. Without that, we would not be here. So, ladies and gentlemen, I very much look forward to today and to working with the outcomes and very much look forward for us all together making a difference in this very, very important area of strategic communications in support of UMP's operations. Thank you. Thank you, Nancy, Sven Erick and Annika for your remarks and giving the workshop its charge for the day. At this time, I would like to invite our first panel to the stage. This panel will focus on strategic communications challenges today in peace operations and will be chaired by Mr. Nick Bernback, Director of Public Affairs, Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support for the United Nations. Mr. Bernback? How will I know who I am, then? You know your name, sir. Are we microphones or no microphones? Yeah, they'll turn us on. Okay, let's see. You're already on. All right, excellent. Good. Thank you and thank you for the opportunity. Thanks to the organizers for pulling this together. It is a most welcome and unusual opportunity for me personally to be able to talk about strategic communications to people who seem to actually want to hear about it. So thank you. That's great. We have a very distinguished panel here and I will take the Chairman's prerogative of saying a few words before we turn it over to them. As you heard Annika say, one of the sort of fundamental principles behind this was the idea of being practical. Was not to simply just lay out what the issues are and then wring our hands and then go back to doing things in the way that we've always done them. But rather to look at where we are, what the problems are and to really try to come up with a couple of issues with regards to how we can try to make it better. And with that in mind what I thought I would do is just look very quickly at what the problem set is that's been defined for this panel. And then I'll take perhaps seven or eight minutes and just go through a couple of points in that regard. And then I'll turn it over to the panel. Let me take the opportunity first to introduce my colleagues from my left is Ambassador Lynn Pasco who up until recently was a member of the Secretary General's Independent Panel on Peace Operations. I know him as the Undersecretary General for Political Affairs and a long-serving American diplomat, a good colleague and a wealth of information we're very lucky to have and welcome sir. On his left is Mr. Marston Moyani, the Strategic Communications Officer from the Peace and Security Department of the African Union. Welcome, thank you for being here. And at the end is my dear colleague Yasmin Abudsen, the Chief Communications and Public Information Officer from Minusta in Haiti but also have served in pretty much any peacekeeping operation that the UN has done that you can think of. Yasmin has been a part of it in the last 10 years and is truly one of the good people in the universe of UN peacekeeping and we're deeply fortunate to have all three of them. In terms of what we're actually here to discuss, the way that it's framed in the setup is that what are the challenges, but also what should we be doing? What are the optimal purposes of STRATCOMs and what are the gaps and is the UN using strategic communications to its full potential? So we can just ignore it. We can get that one out of the way first, right? So is the UN using its full potential? No, it isn't, we need help and I'll put that over there and let's talk about other things for a little bit. So what I want to discuss first is the optimal purposes. So why does STRATCOMs matter and why is it necessary to try to communicate in this slightly inchoate and complicated manner that's more than just putting out press releases from time to time and answering allegations when they arise. So I've been fortunate enough to work at headquarters for many years as the press person, but I've also been deployed on a number of operations most recently in Somalia where I spent three years as the head of information there for the UN. And one of the things that you learn very, very quickly is that UN operations do not win by hard power. It's not what we do, we don't fight and win wars and if you ask us to, it will fail. We succeed when we do through the use of soft power and through the use of explaining and cajoling and deterring spoilers. And fundamentally that act, that peace operations accompany a political process, that we're in support of the talking and of the discussion, that that act means that we are communications driven and that if we are not getting that right then we're putting ourselves at a great disadvantage. The other side of that, the more practical side to put on my peacekeeping hat for a second is a strategic communications approach. It's a defense for you. That actually it means that you are empowering your mission with more information that gives you more survivability, more situational awareness in real time and a better ability to influence the outcome. And those are for many buddies sort of practically driven approaches rather important in today's peacekeeping operations. We'll talk a little bit about that. The other point on what the optimal purposes are that I would just highlight peacekeeping is fundamentally a partnership and it doesn't work if it's not a partnership. And that partnership on the ground can be in a multi-dimensional mission between the police and the military and the various civilian components and the host authorities. But more broadly it's a partnership between everyone that has a stake in peacekeeping. So that's the civil society and that's the militaries and that's the journalists and all of them either working together or the tension of that is what will make peacekeeping successful. Explaining the work of your mission in a way that is comprehensible that makes others want to support it builds the partnership and builds the very thing that empowers you to complete your task successfully. Without partnership peacekeeping tends to not be the right tool for the job. And the strategic communications approach helps with that. So those are my just intro comments on optimal purpose of why we need stratcoms. I'll just say a couple of words now about the center of the problem set which is what are the problems, what's going wrong and our colleagues will get into some of the specifics using their experiences to discuss this but I wanted to highlight a few based on my read of where we are. The first is that there's a structural flaw and a difficulty between headquarters and the field and there's a disconnect. And communicating is complicated from thousands and thousands of miles away. Nobody who is the head of an information component somewhere wants a 10,000 mile screwdriver, wants somebody calling them from four time zones over and saying we don't understand why you're not being more aggressive in saying this in public. That's a very complicated equation for us and our structure in peace operations where we are in fact quite decentralized and we delegate a tremendous amount of responsibility to the field which requires that we at headquarters, sitting in nice offices in Turtle Bay, trust our people in the field. But in order for that to work there has to be a common playbook. There has to actually be a mutually agreed strategic communications plan that allows the structural issue to be addressed. That's the first thing I would say. The second is that in peacekeeping we don't end missions very well and if you look at the universe of peace operations now, many of our large operations are now past their peak and are looking towards how they're going to transition out. As any military person will tell you planning and organizing a retreat is a lot harder than doing in advance and the UN proves that time and time again. And so thinking through what exit strategy means in places like Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo where I've just returned from this weekend or Liberia or Haiti where our colleague is working now these are important questions because it's very difficult to rally resources and to galvanize the attention that is necessary for peace operations to succeed when everyone knows that you're leaving. But here's the trick of it all that if you don't do that you're going to be back there and that moment of leaving the reason it's so complicated militarily is that you're vulnerable that if you leave and you leave prematurely and you pull out bad things happen, you lose the progress you've made and you increase the possibility of having to be redeployed. The day to day life of a public information officer or chief in peacekeeping is very frequently about playing defense and if anyone's reading the stories about you in peacekeeping right now there's your answer that misconduct for example you have to respond aggressively and nobody wants to hear about anything else that's going on on your mission so you have the large mission spread out over the country the size of a continent and no one's interested in what's going on because that news is being subsumed by the issue of misconduct. Taking back the narrative and this is a point that General Gordon has been making for years taking back the narrative is critical in terms of preparing yourself for an informational perspective finding the good stories and telling them in a compelling manner it's critical to a strategic communications plan that works for peace operations because it is that civil affairs officer who's a thousand kilometers away from nowhere or the air ops person sitting on a field in 145 degree heat in Mali I mean that is actually peacekeeping and explaining that and explaining why that has value and explaining what that means to people is not always easy but it's a sine qua non that's one thing that we need to focus on I just have two more and then I'll turn to the panels we're in a world of new channels for media and what needs to be understood is that this is no longer an option anyone who's asking the question should I be tweeting is not paying attention right yes if that is a question in anyone's mind yes you should be tweeting and you shouldn't be doing it without thinking about it it should be part of your overall communications plan for it a political document right it is a creation document that is as important as your mission directive so what are you going to do how are you going to do it to whom do you need to do it to and how will you judge whether or not you've been successful at doing it like that part of it will have a digital media component that's true and it doesn't matter where you are it is true and so that requires training and it requires a shift in mindset because the success of the media campaign is not measured using the same metrics as success in a 20th century style of communicating a top down one way style of communicating digital media is interactive and it's two way and it involves creating a conversation and a series of other small conversations and be ready for that because that is actually how communications is done now and it isn't enough to put out a press release and then walk away from it that isn't how people are expecting you to communicate so you are letting them down you are introducing your influence over them so shifting that that mindset the last point that I want to raise is something that I think about a lot which is that I think that piece operations in general are in a fundamentally changed context and it sounds really quite easy to say that but it's true I've heard it phrased as we were frequently caught in the crossfire now we're in the cross hairs or if you prefer we used to be attacked because of where we were now we're being attacked for who we are and that shift which is not true on every one of our missions but is frankly true on many of them and particularly the big complex ones that matter most your Mali is in your Somali is and such we are in a fundamentally changed environment where the threat level is astronomical also in these places not only is the threat level something we haven't confronted before but the environments themselves are deeply inhospitable and that change that idea of deploying a force effectively on Mars that has to be entirely self sustaining but that is also getting attacked while doing it is a fundamental shift because it isn't the UN of the 1990s which I remember where what it was about was not building walls it was dropping the walls and reaching out and talking with people and the people that you admired when you were a 26 year old civil affairs officer like I was the people that you admired were the ones that were sitting in the cafe bars with the local guys and talking usually in local language and could write these really in depth reports about what was actually happening that's a really hard thing to do in Mogadishu really hard to do in Mogadishu for a variety of reasons and that shift in posture where our walls are now higher and blast radius is a term that I'm quite familiar with and I shouldn't be and the idea of portraying ourselves as an armed camp has a cost it has a cost because it isn't what the UN is in many ways we're not war fighters but when we drive through Mogadishu we sure as heck look like them we're in APCs and we're an armor and that's us so what does that shift mean what does operating in this fundamentally changed environment where people are trying to blow you up and by the way are doing so fairly successfully at a rate of about 110 per year that shift in what it means and how you can use communications as a deterrent to these types of attacks because by the way most of these groups are quite good at using those tactics the digital battle space is a very vibrant place these days so that shift is another thing that in Stratcoms that I feel that we need to think about so with just those couple of things in mind I'd like to turn to the panel and then hopefully get into an interactive discussion I'll ask Ambassador Pasco to go first Thanks a lot Nick let me just pick up on the last point I mean it was fundamentally this point the change world that we're living in out there this certainly is not your father's or your grandfather's peacekeeping this is a very different world that's out there is what drove the Secretary General to set up this independent panel really to look at it to see what's going on to see where we stand today what we're doing right, what we're not doing right and the way that we went about that business was to go out and talk with in various continents with as many people as we could from the heads of the governments down to the civil society that we're working on the ground the ones that were actually the beneficiaries are maybe not the beneficiaries of the operations that we were carrying out into the world I think a couple of things are really quite clear when you talk about strategic communications in the first instance we've got a huge international problem as Nick pointed out the negatives are always there they're always pushed just as one illustration of that the press conference that we had to say what we're talking about overall peace operations was about 70% about abuse by peacekeepers these are the stories these are the lines that people take they run with it and so we have that global problem that I think is very clear which often does not often ignores is often ignorant, totally ignorant of the work that is being done out there in peace operations across the board on the other hand we have a real problem in the countries this idea that Nick was talking about of being more in fortresses in many places for example leads the local people and we got this complaint repeatedly as seeing the UN as a bunch of arrogant foreigners riding around in their white Toyota SUVs with their little canned answers on how you should solve everything and telling everybody how to do it and I think that this is a problem too that we have to work on very hard there's got to be a lot of reach out into the civil societies and on the ground working with the partners that we have there this was brought home to us in conversation after conversation let me just say though that when we're really talking about strategic communications in general fundamentally we've got to look at the product you can't go out and sell soap you can't go out and sell other things if they don't work and this is the fundamental question that the Secretary General really wanted us to look at how well is it working what should we be doing differently what really makes for the world and the settlement of conflicts and the high ideals that are there in the charter 70 years ago how are we measuring up on this that's no secret to anyone that the UN has been in the peace operations business since 1948 on both the political side and the peacekeeping side and it has continued off and on learned a lot of things done extremely well in some places and failed in others my guess is if you walk out on the streets of Washington and ask people they could tell you the failure is more than the successes and that's a failure of communication it seems to me because it's not it's not the way it should be let me just talk a little bit about the conclusions and I would ask people if they're interested enough being in here they might want to read through the report it's not as bad as most of you in reports I must say it's not bad reading and hopefully can give you a reasonable introduction into what we saw as the problems as they were expressed to us and how we could fix those problems in the first instance the Secretary General of Peace Operations across the board that means from his own phone calls to sending envoys out into the field to regional political offices to the big, very big over a billion dollar a year peacekeeping operations and also into what we're doing afterwards what we're doing in sustaining peace how does this work we've got these little pigeon holes are we really producing what we say we're doing several things came to us as pretty obvious points the one I'd like to just back up what Nick said is these are political operations these are not military operations we're not out fighting a war we're trying to solve a conflict we're trying to solve a political problem it's tricky and it's hard but there's an occasional tendency and as you if you read the report you will notice we're sometimes not terribly kind of thinking about issues where they because of the international press and because of the pressures on them to do something and nobody wants to use their own troops for it so the way to do something is to throw peacekeeping operations at it and this is exactly the wrong reason for doing it because the tool is not very good for that it's got to keep in mind the Security Council everybody involved in these issues have to keep in mind these are all political tools and conflicts whether in the old days the old kind of things you were basically having a monitoring of a peace agreement or you're out there really mixing it up in eastern Congo with the bad guys and trying to figure out how you're going to protect the population and help them but this is fundamentally a political operation and we need to be keeping in mind that we are trying to solve problems and move on to something else a second issue that's out there that the panel really focused on was how do we get the UN to be working together and not only internally because it is divided up into all of these ways that people who follow the UN know by the funding mechanisms by the programs and the way they work not to mention just sheer bureaucratic arneriness which there's more than enough of to do but it is inside the UN, it is with our partners and it's particularly with the regional organizations and how we cooperate and where we go back in my day when I was the head of the political department I felt that on occasion the African Union for example was working at it but it was struggling some in some of the way they've come extraordinarily far ahead with them on where they go how we cooperate this has got to be made more formal I mean it's got to be much more closely aligned that we're talking about issues from the early days of political negotiation prevention other sorts of things up through the actual peacekeeping through a sustainable peace in the end and we need to be working on all these not only with the African Union but with other organizations as they're there and the change situation that's out there I think that this issue now we're in not only peacekeeping operations but political things are the same you were in Somalia you know how it works you're a target in these places it's not easy it's tough and you have to figure out how to operate and how to operate more effectively and how to actually have results what do you do about the I mean Somalia is a particularly good political example because we went from absolutely nothingness to not a very good situation today but an awfully lot better situation today than it was before and it's been a big success and it's been done totally with the African Union and working together they have provided the forces the UN has supported them done a lot of the political heavy work in the early days but it has been a big success story for all of us and it's been done by working together making sure that we're very close and doing it now can we copy that in the problems in the Middle East that we've got all over that's a real question and it's a serious issue that we have to that we have to keep working on finally I think it's important that it was important for us as we looked at it that we've got to remember it's not only political operation but it's political it's people that are involved in the end it's where we're going to work with them where they're going to come out they see that it's actually changing their lives it's going to make the difference all of us would love to have the story about the press going out and talking to some villager who said they really saved us and if the press wants to go you know outside Goma to one of the towns there that had about 35,000 people in it was then depopulated by the bad guys that came in then the peacekeepers moved in and had to fight their way in and we got there towns people came out of the woods and back downtown and and if you walk around the streets there the the force commander that's there who is forces and I won't name which ones they were we're reluctant to go into the first place and change their mind he is now a hero in town the little kids line up to have their picture taken this is these are the stories of what we can do but it really does require this different kind of thinking. I think that the other things that that we emphasize very hard was the UN has got to do more on conflict prevention we've got to be stopping these things before they go we've got to be doing more on peacemaking the UN has talked about this subject ever since it's founding I think it really gave it a big push a decade ago some some strides have been made but the money hasn't fallen I mean people have not put the money where their mouth is there's a lot more work there that needs to be done protection of civilians is where we have forces on the ground is obviously absolutely critical not only to the UN's reputation but more importantly the people on the ground that need to help if we're there we've got to be doing it and we we did quite a bit of talking in the report about that about what the how you go about making it clear between the security council and discussion of its mandates what is really needed the discussions with the troop contributors to make sure that everybody is on the same page if they're not on the same page they shouldn't go it just shouldn't happen and when you get out there how you're going to carry out the operations and it shouldn't be changed in the end I mean there's nothing worse for the UN's reputation than not have protected a bunch of civilians on the other hand for the newspaper to say oh this was only 20 miles away it took five hours to get there through the jungle is again a real issue that has to be discussed and there has to be fairness in the whole thing I think also most people involved in this business whether in the UN or in bilateral groups or countries who contributed would think that the sustainable peace side is the weakest of the entire issue we really don't know very well how to put countries back on their feet we talk about it but the areas that the countries that have actually been there and done it have put together a paper on G7 Plus it's called of a group that that have actually been through this of very fragile states and moved on that the areas that they pinpoint as the most important one get 5% of the international aid it all goes to other kinds of projects it doesn't go to the sustainable peace thing we need to be much better on coordination we need to be better at moving it forward interestingly as we looked at this overall process of the things that needed to be done we don't really think that it's going to cost much more money maybe none at all some of the things that we do these days make no sense at all we for example come up with these Christmas tree as they're normally called ornament mandates which have sometimes 40 things that you're supposed to do when you get out there now of course everybody wants to put their people on the team to get out there and do that and they may end up sitting in a hotel because they can't possibly work in the atmosphere that's out there they may have all the best intentions in the world as Nick said you can't go to a bar in Mogadishu or a coffee house in Mogadishu and chat up the local Shabab guy and see what he really is thinking about you'll probably get a bullet if you try that and this whole question really sequencing of the council getting very clear on what it wants in its mandates a few things to do it's much cheaper to get that much out there in the field it can do fast we suggest quick ways to get it out in the field not only with our regional partnerships but also having a small force that we can put out there quickly ourselves this really should work and look at missions hard are they the right size do they make any sense can they carry out what are their mandates that's fixed I think it will go a long way the point of all that is it seems to me is that we came out of this process with several thoughts one is when in the first discussions that we had with people there seemed to be a million miles between some people in the general assembly and the security council on what really needed to be done how it could be done I mean the rhetoric was all over the place and finger pointing but after you started talking with people and particularly when you talk with people in the field you find there really is a fairly strong consensus to say we've got to do this stuff this stuff is real it's important this is a function that most governments can't even consider doing others are not going to be too interested in doing the UN brings a unique distance as well as the other things when it comes to these conflicts that I think is appreciated and very valuable so there's much closer to a consensus I think on what to do it just needs a boost to get there and to appreciate it along I think that also when you look at the structure and what is being done out there in the world despite the growing conflicts despite the things if we can manage to use all of the influence available to the international community it's interesting to me that we can make some real progress and keeping focus on what the real problems are getting away from the arguments oh I can't do this or that's too expensive we've got to do something else I'm really saying okay what's really needed to make this work will go forward we're hoping that the Secretary General Secretary General Bonn will take some of this proposals at this point and we're hoping that the next Secretary General will move forward we do know the communications important we did a lot talking Nick did a good job of propagandizing us among other things but it is important it is a critical part of the overall operations and I look forward to the discussions today I think that as this goes forward we can make the world understand better what valuable instrument and tool it really has here with the United Nations and we can also make the people on the ground see the changes that really are coming to them because the UN is care the international communities care and we've worked at it thank you very much thank you Ambassador Pascoe before I move on to Marsden for his presentation I just say that when I was in Somalia working for Mr. Pascoe in the mission the political office in Somalia we worked alongside the African Union troops and one of the things that I thought was really interesting was in some ways they were the reverse of what I'm used to in UN peacekeeping context in that a lot of the times the contingents that you work with in UN peacekeeping have served many times before in UN peace operations and so they're quite good at speaking the language of the UN and making sure that their presentations are pretty much the same presentation that you would have gotten from a political officer and that worked for the UN and they have integrated in terms of culture with us and they that doesn't necessarily translate to a willingness to undertake complex operational tasks it doesn't mean it doesn't but it means that there isn't a linear relationship between it I found that in working with Amazon that the reverse was true that there was a cultural divide of how we spoke to each other but that in reality the Amazon troops that were there knew exactly what they were there to do and if you look at what happened over the from the Ramadan offensive and onwards I mean Amazon is a peacekeeping operations says so on its card but you would call it anything else peace enforcement or whatever but what it did do is essentially fight and win a war against a determined opposition I mean it drove Shabab out of Mogadishu while we were there and held the city and it's still a pretty difficult and complex to go and you still wouldn't want to go and sit outside at a tea shop there if you looked like me but you don't have a front line anymore in Mogadishu by kilometer 5 and there was a couple of years ago and the reason that that's not there is because of the international partnership and all the great work done by people behind the scenes in countries and stuff but it's done on the ground by the boots on the ground and the boots on the ground were Amazon and it simply would not have happened without them and in my head it's important that we keep that in mind as well so let me now please turn to Marcin Moyani from the African Union Thank you Nick and thank you Lin as well for those a lot of the issues that I wanted to mention have actually been touched on because as the African Union we face many of the same challenges that the UN does and so I'll just focus my presentation on just one key issue that I want to pick up on today and that is the engagement of the UN peace operations with the citizens through the media through African media from an African context. Well to remain relevant in a fast changing world UN strategic communications must be forward looking adaptable, flexible and connected. The world is more independent than ever with global trends in geopolitical, economic environmental, technological and social dimensions. These trends influence the security environment in which we operate. Where there has been terrorism and extremism asymmetric warfare and proliferation threats will remain complex, global and subject to unforeseeable developments. In today's 24-7 information environment nothing stays confidential for long. It's only a matter of time before information leaks and we've discovered that the hard way we just have to simply communicate. Ingrid Lehmann Managing peace processes a handbook for EU peace operations practitioners says in the 21st century they are not only professional reporters covering a conflict and from experience countless interested observers some maybe citizens bearing witness who can create a story simply through a text message or simply through a photograph or a video posted on the internet and within seconds it's gone viral. So this makes the challenge obviously for the UN peace operations greater. This has allowed everyone to express themselves publicly including armed terrorist groups. No doubt the UN is acutely aware of this strategic, the role strategic communication plays in its work as evidenced obviously by this forum here today and many others evidenced obviously by the elaborate communication strategies handbooks, plans and guides that are being implemented on a daily basis obviously with varying degrees of success and the UN in its form and structures including its peace operations appears well placed to play its leadership role in global progress, entertainment of its objectives. However, like I said in Africa I think the UN needs to adopt a more people centered approach to its communications through strengthening community relations in order to bring the peoples, the citizens and their organizations closer to the UN. Africans are still generally and critically uninformed about the programs and activities of the UN and I dare say the AU that I work for and in particular about their peace operations and thereby you would find broadly ignorant of its vision, objectives ideals, principles and motives. We need to cultivate a culture shift in the way that we engage with African audiences especially through communications and the media that through the channels that are most accessible to them. We need to demystify the UN and its image in Africa and the common perception that the UN is usually acting at the behest of western governments by connecting directly with the people and the opportunities for these. At the same time we must continue to strengthen like my colleagues mentioned and we need to develop a more sustainable society organizations and here I am talking about CSOs that truly represent the aspirations of Africans across the continent. Public confidence in turn is enhanced by the UN's ability to achieve this mandate in a way that is open, transparent and consistent with member nations values and expectations. A membership which I must add spans 54 countries in Africa. The media is perhaps the most important channel in the world for African audiences. But relations with African media are checkered, inconsistent and not strongly coordinated. Whereas the UN has achieved a lot of success with international media and putting their voice in the international arena, we feel as if in Africa this has usually taken a back pinch. Television for instance in Africa which is rapidly closing the gap in communication as a source of news for African. The global mainstream western media is usually just available in the satellite distribution channels which are way inaccessible for the ordinary African. By reorienting the media relation strategies to better engage African people, the UN can help shape a positive public perception of its peace operations through the African media. But paradoxically here is where the challenge lies. Because with African media there are very many challenges and I'm sure Nick and others who have worked in Somalia, in Mali Central African Republic can attest to is that usually it's having a lot of challenges in terms of financing, in terms of ownership in terms of regulation in terms of how does the UN remain avoid being partisan in working with a lot of these African media organizations. But I think we've got to a point where we just absolutely have to, despite these challenges, engage them in a way that is constructive and positive. They, we have found are often only engaged when there is an event, a major event to be announced. Say for instance the signing of a peace agreement or the appointment of a mediator in a process of the announcement of a new peacekeeping mission. But less through the beginning of the process and this has an effect of limiting how objective their view of the broader issues as well as their understanding of the conflicts and interventions that are being suggested. As a result many African countries the media coverage of the UN and its peace operations by local media is often ad hoc as I said and in most cases lacks meaningful depth. And the relationship in Africa with the global and mainstream news media is a little tenuous because of its well known centuries of the marginal and negative coverage and presentation of African realities. And this could explain perhaps why a lot of Africans are a little skeptical these days about the global this preoccupation with the global news agencies as opposed to the local radio stations that they listen to on a daily basis as opposed to the television channels that they turn on every day. There are several advantages that lie in UN peace operations engaging with African media local African media. One that comes to mind is the multilingualism that you get from and the diversity in rich and penetration which these local media outlets because they serve both rural and urban and many of them broadcasting in vernacular which often even the national broadcasters will not give you. However like I said there are certain risks that come with this model that call for tactical selectiveness and targeting to ensure that the UN remains impartial and maintains its moral high ground. One obviously example is that national broadcasters for instance mainly support government's views whilst the private several private broadcasters have direct ties with both the ruling and opposition political figures and elites. And as a result African media often have this dubious reputation of fomenting hate speech and inciting violence. The Rwanda case comes to mind and many others in Kenya from my own country where I come from. However in many African countries in recent years there have been national broadcasters beginning to loosen their conservative approach and with doing state funding are now seeking to re-engineer themselves more like the private players. Of course this is both seen as positive and negative whereas one side may look at it as unfortunate since it undermines the original intent of a public broadcaster as a provider of non-commercial and educated programs. We are now moving into an realm that is past the original mandate but others see it as an opportunity for expanded and creative liberal space so whichever way you look at it that may be an opportunity right there. Also on the other hand like I said African media also appear to lack the capacity or orientation to cover the continent and its institutions including the UN and the AU adequately. Most African media still rely on the mainstream media for their content and news. Even when it's about neighboring countries you'll find someone from Somalia or from Kenya where I come from tuning into the BBC to get information about what is going on in Bruni. It's a fact. They may not have the resources to send journalists to Bruni to cover the conflict yet it's in the same region and those are the realities that we're looking at. The lack of capacity could also be attributed to the absence of freedom of expression that has existed for a long time and this could be a challenge when it comes to the UN and UN operations engaging people African people in a participatory manner. That could be a big challenge. The resource capacity difficulties like I said the financing, the ownership regulations the ethics involved in engaging African media comes sharply into focus and there are many other challenges externally just to name a few the challenge of journalists' income in Africa is relatively low particularly for a huge number of correspondence who are not on formal contract it's not the same here from my experience in working in many countries the proverbial brown envelope you simply just every press briefing you'll find a brown envelope going around with cash in it and journalists have come to expect that this is a norm these are things that the UN I'm sure faces and tackles I mean it's unethical but this is the reality that we are facing journalism training is expensive lacking in modern equipment and facilities and often too general in orientation and not providing the necessary specific skills that are required of course the media like has been mentioned are much better at making stories out of problems than success that's a big challenge and the temptation is there to seek the sensational that is inevitable even in Africa internally like has been mentioned as we have experienced also at the African Union the relationship between the troop contributing countries and the UN's missions strategic communications objectives is often tenuous and it sounds strange but being in Africa I have the same problems that Nick has because being based at the headquarters in Addis Ababa and giving instructions to our colleagues in Mogadishu about what we want done it's a bit tricky because you're not in the quite frankly Addis Ababa is not Mogadishu Addis Ababa is not Bangi so we encounter very much the same issues but it's clear that the nation's states contributing troops although they have their individual and national political and operational imperatives they have to align this with the communication objectives of the mission and this is a challenge I see the UN facing as well but the missions and troops contributing countries need to maintain a unity of effort, a unity of messaging regarding the missions activities and management of incidents in conclusion there are stronger media sector and up to the advantage of the UN and other international and regional organizations like the African Union is in no doubt but what we need is an adoption of a new orientation and attitude to communication with African people through African media despite the inherent challenges that have mentioned we are living in a situation where we have to explain ourselves better or mandate our mission and we have to connect through the channels that are accessible to those people that we are trying to serve we should combine all these efforts should combine to transform the UN's communication practices enhance its image and bring the organization closer home to the consciousness of the citizens of Africa thank you thank you very much for that I'll now turn before we go to questions I'll turn to Yazmina I think I met Yazmina when she was working in Congo I'm not sure because it could have also been when she was working in Haiti or working in Lebanon or working in Liberia so it's hard to tell she's the quintessential practitioner she has an arts background a film background and brings that sensibility to her work but is really one of the best that the UN is fortunate enough to have and I'm thrilled that she's been able to come here from Port-au-Prince to talk to us Yazmina thank you very much and thank you can you hear me thank you Nick and thank you Ambassador Pasco and colleagues I think Nick has said it all I can leave now and with that introduction I don't know what more I could really do after that but it is true I think that what I'll maybe take some time with now is maybe talk a little bit about some of the things that did work because some things have worked and some of the challenges that we did and we still face in the field using the high panels the panels portion on strategic communication as a sort of validation to go forward with a number of ideas also hopefully giving us a carte blanche to be able to say but yes this is strategic communications when we come up with some very convoluted concept of what to do on the ground to have conversations with people and the budget officer says but this is not in your line item so I can't really finance this so I thank you very much for those recommendations because this allows us to be able to do our work on the ground I mentioned and Nick mentioned the fact that I do come from a film background I joined the UN in 2001 at the wake of 9-11 I had just left the film industry having tried to sell a film to make and sell a script to Hollywood about a love story on the backdrop of illegal immigration and migration to Europe from North Africa and the film executive said but why would you want to do that why don't you just make it a love story take away all of the political background and I stood in my ground and I didn't make my film and I left and look at us here today migration immigration from North Africa we're living it today so I think that what the UN allowed me to do and gave me a license to do on the ground whatever it is sitting up there thank you for coming is to go and make that political a reality and make it be heard and make it be known make it what we try to do on the ground in partnership with colleagues from the African Union and other colleagues give that a voice and give the people that we are sent to support and help a voice not always easy very challenging but the key to it I think and I think all of the colleagues have said it here is really conversations and when we say conversations it's plural but it's actually a singular noun communication communications is conversation it is the two way interaction it is not only with the constituents and the beneficiaries on the ground as they're called on paper but it's the people for whom you're working for and that also includes conversations internally with our colleagues from the police and our colleagues from the force we have to have those two way conversations about what the objective is what the outcome should be and it is essential that those are polyphonic that they be on various levels and that we be able to actually create strategic partnerships with the local communities and as you rightly said the people have to be at the heart of that conversation and have to be at the heart of the communication and it's not only about messaging and the message that you have to get across because you do need to get the messages across the core values why we are there and what we're actually supposed to do but you also have to be able to listen to know what is expected of this process by the beneficiaries so that that can then be translated into action and into reality the notion that polyphonic dialogues or conversations they're not just about languages a great deal has to do with the different languages but they're also about tolerance and inclusivity and being able to really listen if a conversation has to be changed because you need to know what your end result is first so if a conversation needs to be changed to get to that end result that means you have to have a discussion and you have to have a discussion with a variety of people be they belligerent parties be they actual civil society be they journalists be they the media and not shy away from them that is something that has to be done I mean I come from a multi-faith multi-cultural Arab French educated in the US and if we didn't have those polyphonic conversations at home we'd have a huge peacekeeping problem there as well and you have to be able to take that step back that being said maybe some of the things that I'd like to touch upon is how the success of creating strategic partnerships with local actors is crucial a few examples I can list one of the other things sorry I'll backtrack just a little bit is that these conversations they have to occur one on one an individual becomes a vector of changing a behavior as well as an entire community and those conversations are not just face to face conversations happen in Twitter conversations happen on Facebook conversations happen on Tumblr conversations happen one on one conversations happen in the media even if we don't think so the way that we respond to questions there is back and forth and the mediums every single one of them have to be used film, photo, etc to have those conversations if we look at research that says that it takes one person anywhere between 18 to 224 days to change a behavioral habit if they're exposed to it continuously how do we change and how much time does it take to change the behavioral habit of a young youth in Sitesole who has the option to have a lot of funds and a lot of money if he joins this gang or not much funds, not much money get shot but chooses to go and take part in a workshop to sing and sing peace and value other values how much time is that going to take and what incentive do you give so one example is actually creating a strategic partnership as we did just very recently with three very well known Haitian singers who give of their time to tour the country and do their own peace workshops through song and go to get youth who are from vulnerable areas or possibly vulnerable areas prone to gang violence and say no don't go there come and sing will give you an opportunity to be the next superstar if possible it sounds cheesy and people will roll their eyes and say oh gosh there's the Haitian American Idol but no I mean if you show one person a possibility that is not violence and somebody else who has made it who you look up to can actually come and say this is what a possibility it's worth looking at and it's worth exploring or you do as Albert did in the DRC you say okay there is a new way to go about convincing somebody to change their behavior when it comes to DDR disarmament immobilization and repatriation you decide to take your video camera and go into the bush try and convince somebody to talk to you about a desire to go home to go back to lay down their arms you take that film and you go to that person's house in another country and you show that video to the family they look they weep you do another video and you bring it back into the bush and you tell that person here is the video and the mother is saying please come home forget it you know it's all over that's a conversation but that takes time and time sometimes is a luxury we don't have or we do have but in the media or in the public eye we don't have so how much time can you invest and of course the nature of peacekeeping mandates has changed tremendously as Ambassador Pascoe said today we're not as communicators merely reporting non-biased information through radio waves or talking about the achievements of the peacekeeping forces the mandates themselves have changed we have to reconstruct countries be they from natural war we have demobilization disarmament we have political transition we have we go to places where there's not even any peace to keep yet so what do you do as strategic communicators and how much of that can you actually resolve through strategic communication it's easy or at some times to be working when we're going through this I say I want to work for you I have a bridge to show for in a week or something like that with this time frame how can you show the political and social behavioral change that is actually required and in how much time can you can you do that how is that measured how much time does that take so of course obviously surveys are important and necessary a few I mean there are a few other examples of ways that conversations happen but we must definitely not shy away from any use of medium because the crucial aspect is the target audience who do you want to reach and if it means you keep a radio station because as you've rightly said in some places there is only radio that works and sometimes it's only a wind up radio with solar panels and in other places you must definitely be an adept of all of the social media today when YouTube becomes the new cinema veritas or the new witness to to history so as not to say the angel of history because we don't want to be looking backwards but we want to be looking forward when that is the truth of the reality and things happen so quickly the reality happens in 30 seconds and you need to be in a number of places at the same time I don't necessarily envy Nick's job who has to at the same time be in Mogadishu and be in Paul Prince and be in Kabul simultaneously because there is a YouTube here and there is a YouTube here and there is a YouTube here and that is reality and unless you are present on the scene everywhere and you are witness to that reality it's very difficult to engage in the conversations so we have to find ways to be not only conversing but we also have to find ways to be a step forward and a step ahead so that we are not playing catch up and we are not playing the we are not on the defensive all the time and of course it goes without saying that any strategic communication plan you have can be utterly eviscerated by anybody's misconduct that is or any mishap or any mishappenies that is for sure and we all the old adage of it takes more than 20 years to build a reputation in 20 seconds to destroy it is very true and as communicators in the field one of the worst things one of the worst one of the worst things you want to be faced with is when you come up to somebody and you say listen you have the right to access to justice you have the right to all of these things or you would like to give them positive information yes you have to do this and yes no there is no rape as a crime your child should not be abused and then you get the turn around and you get the yes but and we don't need to finish the sentence what do you do with that how do you still take that conversation to a place where the person still knows that they have the right to justice and that unfortunately there are misconduct there is misconduct but others will be brought to responsible for their actions it's difficult on the ground because you end up having to be the flak jacket for everything but you still have to keep going because there is that possibility of changing that one person who will not go into violence who will then report a crime stand to sexual exploitation and who will condemn SGVB and that's the key and if you change one person and like in DDR if one person goes back and one person talks that just keeps building it I think in the discussion in the workshops we'll probably be able to go into more details about it but again I think just in closing peacekeeping peace maintaining what we have with our colleagues from the African Union remains one of this very crucial elements and essential elements for dialogue and for furthering political and social change we have to tweak it a little and of course as time goes today everything happens so quickly we have to quickly start tweaking to be able to adapt and one of the main things is being all on the same page on the same playbook as Nick said and that includes our colleagues civilian within missions as well as force and as well as police we have to be integrated within our own house to then be able to project that forward just two quick things both in Haiti and in south Lebanon we managed at different times to really have a cohesive network and a cohesive working relationship with the spokesperson both police force and civilian all on the same page all speaking the same language which was what was needed to be achieved in order to have that duplicating effect and in order to actually be able to push the message forward and actually have people see the UN as a unified entity and that includes when dealing with issues in Cité Soleil and being able to pass that message in order if you go to Cité Soleil today extremely different slum unfortunately still a slum but very different in terms of the degree of violence and not after a certain amount of time in Haiti south Lebanon as well the construction of the mission very different but still force spokespeople dealing and reporting to civilian who then had the same we were on the same page speaking the same language so that that message that search for behavioral change within the community local community where we were operating was the same and the mixed messages didn't come across so I mean I think maybe I'll leave it at that and then if there's more questions okay thank you very much so we have not much time and a few questions so what we're going to do is I've received the questions in writing and each of them is addressed to a different member of the panel so everybody's going to get one question and then at the end I'm going to take just two minutes and make a couple of points by way of slightly summing up some of the themes that were raised during it first question to Marston struck by your comment Marston about the challenges of an environment that embraces non-freedom of expression and how can the UN and I would add how can the UN or the AU how can a multilateral deployment mitigate that with regards to communications and how could we protect journalists in those contexts who are at further risk of persecution well thank you Nick for the person who asked that question that's a tough one it's not easy I threw it out there as a challenge but as a challenge that the UN and AU and other organizations working in these areas have to face head on there are examples of media, local African media that have managed to break the barrier and speak freely but at the same time passing your messages through these channels has to be in a very tactical manner so that you do not seem to be ascribing to any political or you don't seem to be taking sides in the conversations that are taking place in the public space protecting journalists in countries where freedom is not guaranteed is much tougher to deal with the UN has been very successful in setting up its own radio in some of its missions to communicate to the local people in the local languages and I guess this is a model that needs to be continued the only challenge here is that as maybe Nick would attest to it's expensive it's an expensive venture to set up a radio station and transmit create content and keep it running and maintain the equipment it's a huge venture and you cannot do this for every sector that your peacekeeping mission operates in so yes it's a big challenge but these are some of the things that we need to be looking at critically and engaging with each other so that we can find solutions to okay thank you Marston the next question is for you Yasmina please comment on the state of play where peacekeeping communications are in a competitive communications environment with actors in the conflict particularly with regards to social media can I get like something else for 500 talk a little bit about social media no thanks for the question it is actually very challenging it is very competitive and I think the main thing is are we in competition truly when we go to and use social media we have to really go back to what Nick was saying in his very beginning when he says what is the objective of the strategy you're trying to put in place is your objective to be that news breaking media on twitter or is your objective to use those tools to further what you're supposed to be doing and what you have strategically put out set out to do and as that I mean one of the biggest challenges when faced with a very active social media ground I mean even if we take a look at at Haiti today sorry everything happens on social media whether it's something that's political or not and I'll get a call from from the leadership saying has this happened do you have anything on whether this event has occurred the first thing that we do is we go to look at the twitter account of either official to say whether that's happened or not because if it hasn't been tweeted it hasn't really occurred and it depends on the places so it is extremely challenging and you have to in that respect you have to be in a competitive state you have to learn you have to monitor all of your twitter you have to monitor even your tumblr and your instagrams and at all which is something that is crucial but in terms of how you use it to further what your strategic communication objective is very different you don't need to rush that one you don't need to be in a tick for tech on that because what you're trying to do is use the tools at hand to be able to do that political and social change which takes time, which takes analysis and which takes actually knowing in lieu of being able to sit at the cafe and discuss is to actually do the chats open chats with people and to get the sense of what the community wants to be able to then translate that in the messaging that you're actually putting out on social media it is not always easy in certain respects I mean in south Lebanon sometimes the journalists knew the things that happened before you knew them as the spokesperson so it was very difficult and it's not always easy to monitor and to balance out and there are two separate elements a knowing how you want to use your social media and for what purpose and then whether you're a news outlet or if you're usually only for strategic communications to achieve a particular result which is usually political and social change Thank you Yasminah the third question is to Mr. Pasco did the question of strategic communications and how inadequately it is being done by the UN come up in the discussions with the panel reviewing peace operations particularly with member states or civil society with those issues that were raised do you address that? Yeah certainly the most discussion was from civil society on what you're doing on the ground where you're getting your points across are you being too aloof are you bringing people in and hearing what they have to say I think all of this was there and very much part of it some people on the panel had very direct experience with their efforts working with the various communities whether they were religious or whatever to reach out to make the point more but I think this is clearly a basic issue and whether you're in a UN or in an embassy or whatever you've got to reach out to the public as much as you can in many ways I think the reaching out to the public is something we should be able to do and can do more easily if that's the right word than the broadest thing of changing the image and making sure people understand what the UN is doing which I find really harder Okay I'm getting the sign that we have to wrap up so I'll answer the question that was from me very quickly and then I'll just go to the seven points I have that I want to say and I'll just go through them rapidly So how do you deal with spoilers from a strategic communications perspective and can you use the council and others to persuade or beat them Yeah I mean the short answer is that when people are actively communicating against you responses required and when they are spoilers on the ground they can be deterred using communications if you can put in place something that explains why those actions are not in the interest of others or of them and viewing potential spoilers whether those are political spoilers or from a communications perspective essentially as an oppositional force that needs to be engaged is a mentality that doesn't come naturally to the sort of traditional UN communicator but is one that I think is quite helpful particularly in line of what is meaning was just saying about the instantaneous nature of these exchanges that there's a whole realm where it's not that you have to wait an eight hour news cycle it's that if you're on Twitter frequently if there's an active discussion going on your cycle is eight minutes and so if you're engaged in a discussion in a microblogging site and you're not immediately responding then you're no longer engaged in that discussion and so all this requires a bit of a new perspective on things and I think that we would be well served to accept that part of modern strategic communications in a peace operation is to have a media secretariat, a strategic communications driven but digital media secretariat that whose job it is is to basically play air defense and to respond accordingly so on just a couple of points that I want to take away that I heard different people say different things about on strategic communications one measurable the thing about Stratcom and about how you communicate in a modern way is that actually everything you do leaves a trace and everybody knows that that if you touch a computer or send an email and you think you hit delete that isn't actually gone and any intelligent person can find that and there's a trail for you well that has good sides too it's not just that if you buy a pair of boots that the internet tracks you and tries to keep selling you pairs of boots there's good sides to big data as well for us which is that you can measure how you're doing with your audiences and this is done to varying degrees of success it doesn't mean that one of your key audiences is a rural population that is illiterate and no longer logged on and not able to log on to any devices no that isn't the right channel for them but that doesn't mean that there aren't bits where that is the right channel and you can measure whether or not your messages are achieving the desired result requires a little bit of thinking thinking it through and having professionals who have in many ways almost a marketing background a consumer background but it can be done and you can generate data and that's the thing about modern stratcoms is you can generate data it's not just remember to do your audience survey but it is actually you can now tell what it is that people want and how they think about things and that measuring is a major bit tailoring and this is the point that was raised by all three actually who are you talking to now in marketing this is sometimes called audience delineation but the point is that you have different audiences in a piece operations context but that doesn't mean that all the messages have to be the same it means that you know who those audiences are and figure out the best ways to get messages to them and measure whether or not it's had its desired impact but tailoring your messages specifically to those individual constituencies by definition will increase your effectiveness the third is wonderful word polyphonic which I loved polyphonic communications and that's absolutely right that one message many voices it should be the way it is it's no longer this idea of monster corporate message from on high and then it gets sent out actually the nature of modern communications are many voices but many voices that hopefully are singing from the same the same sheet and I think that that idea of bringing in others to have that conversation so using potential advocates civil society and others getting their voices in along the lines of what you think is important is a very very nuanced and intelligent way of approaching modern strategic communications the fourth is is interactivity and this strangely enough is one of the hardest things I think for the in the UN context this is really now a discussion right and that's easy to say and hard to implement because a lot of the times the mission doesn't want to hear what people are saying back to them and that that's unfortunate but it's true but modern communications involve a discussion and they involve a dialogue and they involve you and your shop being a part of that interactive dialogue driven by an imperative of seeking change which is a point that has been made in hers that it's about a dialogue designed to achieve something right and so being in that dialogue and measure how it's going but be a part of an interactive dialogue even if it means that you seed control over bits of the message practical or Mr. Pascoe put it product what's the product we have to know what we're selling and we have to know what it is that we're there to do and we have to be able to explain it in clear and easy ways and you know my sense is that the UN frequently will come up with slogans and say that's it like I'm on the road to peace or something and that's fine and that's also really useful in an electoral season and things like that but actually our mandates are tend to be really complex whether they're these Christmas tree mandates or not they're difficult and they're generally unsatisfactory to the local population that frequently thinks well the UN here so now everything's going to be okay right and that's not mandate the council gave you the council did not say use all resources at your disposal and just fix it right the council said do this and do this but meanwhile don't forget to protect civilians under imminent threat of harm even though you don't have any resources and that sort of thing so explaining clearly in language that is accessible to the key audiences what it is that you're going to do practically what's your product is it is from my perspective a key one using all tools at your disposal it's really easy to sit here and say you know we need Instagram we need Twitter we need Foursquare we need a Tumblr blog honestly no you don't what you need are digital media channels that achieve an effect of the particular audience the names of those those those programs will change in two years and they're frankly not relevant what's relevant is a social networking site what's relevant is something that allows images including moving images to be transmitted quickly between individuals what's relevant is something that is a micro blogging platform that allows you to send short burst communications that either inform or comment in a timely manner what's important is not the name of it what's not what's important is that all the tools at your disposal are used in support of your broad strategic communications objectives to reach the audiences you need but when someone says to me you know I think we really need a Facebook account and it drives me nuts because no explain to me why you need a social networking account to reach a particular audience then let's talk about what the delivery system should be and then the last point is responsiveness and timeliness it's just modern news cycle you can't let it sit and an allegation comes out of sexual exploitation and abuse by your peacekeepers you have to respond and whether we're calling it deterring potential spoilers or whatever the reality is that if you're engaged in a modern strategic communications operation whether or not your goal is to you know dominate the information battle space or not the bottom line is you must engage and once you have engaged you must keep that engagement up and going forward because that's how modern communications are done you must be responsive and you must be timely or on the other hand be entirely comfortable with just communicating once every two months by press release when a peace agreement is signed and that's fine but if you're going to do modern stratcoms there are things inherent in how to do that and that needs to be accepted as part of the mind shift that I think I'm talking about. So with that thank you all for a stimulating conversation and we'll get more into it later. Thank you.