German Federal Foreign Office

The sensitisation SSR course is designed for policymakers and practitioners who are working in the field of security and justice reform to build both SSR knowledge and skills. The objective of this course is to provide participants with a solid introduction to the concept, policy framework and international good practice of security and justice reform through its practical and exercised-based collaborative learning methodology. The course provides an overview of the various dimensions of SSR and emphasises the importance of adopting a holistic and context-specific approach when working in transitional, fragile and/or post-conflict contexts. The course also discusses key issues such as gender, coordination and SSR programming. The course provides the necessary foundations for subsequent trainings.

ISSAT, jointly with Germany, will develop comprehensive mappings of donor support to SSR in Nigeria and Mali. In Mali, the mapping will focus on the criminal justice chain, including accountability. In Nigeria, the mapping will look at both the security forces and the criminal justice chain, also including accountability. With the aim of further building German SSR capacity, a joint Germany-ISSAT team will develop the methodology and undertake the mappings.

The methodology will be finalised during a one/two-day workshop at ISSAT in Geneva. This will be followed by a desk review and telephone interviews, exploiting ISSAT’s network across bilateral donors and multilateral actors, and building on already existing material. The findings will then be consolidated with a 10-day field mission to each country that will involve donors, implementing partners of SSR projects and international NGOs, as well as national institutions of the security and justice sector, including relevant ministries. The subsequent reports will then be shared by the joint Germany-ISSAT team across the international community active in the countries through an in-situ workshop that could also include discussions on how to further consolidate international support. 

1. 17-18 February 2016: Receive the annual visit from the German Armed Forces Staff College (FuAkBw) to DCAF. Up to 15 OF3 (majors) will take part in the visit to International Geneva.
2. 8-11 March 2016: Following on from initial support on SSR design and planning to the FuAkBw in November 2015, FuAkBw wishes to expand its understanding of SSR design and planning considerations in its March 2016 planning exercise. The planning exercise will run over the course of three weeks, involving Headquarters staff officers ranking from captains to brigadiers. The exercise will apply the Comprehensive Operational Planning Directive (COPD) to a NATO planning scenario. After assessing the NATO Commander's orders and reviewing Military Response Options (MROs), the exercise will design and elaborate a project. Part of the plan will integrate elements for preventing or de-escalating conflict, providing early warning and early action by building resilience, partly through the role of the military in SSR.
3. 31 October - 1 November: Lead the Theory of Change sub-group for SSR as part of the OF5 Operational Thinking course, which gathers Germany's top 20 full colonels together to advance their military education.

One German-Netherlands Corp (1GNC) will hold its civil-military training period "Exercise Common Effort" from 27 June to 1 July. This year's exercise will concentrate on “Libya & the Region”, and on “Migration/Refugees”.

Participants will be divided into the following thematic groups:

• protection of civilians
• SSR
• governance
• humanitarian
• economic/private sector
• strategic/regional 

The German government has initiated a consultation process in preparation for its new inter-agency guidelines on crisis engagement and peacebuilding. As part of this consultation process, the collaborative research centre (SFB 700) "Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood" at the Freie Universität Berlin will bring together experts from civil society, academia, practice and policy for a debate on how to improve Germany’s future engagement in supporting security and justice sector reforms in view of the inherent challenges of state-building.

ISSAT has been invited to provide input for a working group on how to locate the 'line of best fit' for supporting effective and legitimate security and justice sectors, and to be a resource person for this working group.

Understand to Prevent (U2P) was one of ten lines of development in the Multinational Capability Development Campaign (which consists of mostly NATO and like-minded nations – see also the MCDC website). The U2P line of development sought to elaborate the role that militaries can adopt, in partnership with other governmental departments and civil society, in preventing violent conflict.

The first iteration of meetings (in the last two-year cycle) produced the capstone ‘doctrine’ embodied in the Understand to Prevent Foundation Studies book linked below. Subsequently, the meetings sought to operationalise the doctrine into a more tangible Handbook of tools and process. Most of the military representatives involved came from their national concepts and doctrine development centres, so there was plentiful scope for open and out-of-the box thinking.

• U2P Foundation Studies book – an informative and concise delve into the theory and evidence supporting of prevention of violent conflict;
• The Understand to Prevent concept (short paper).

In January 2016, the U2P Handbook is looked at interoperability with the NATO Comprehensive Operational Planning Directive (COPD), and with NATO CIMIC doctrine and processes.

Further opportunities to trial the Handbook are welcome.

For full access to the U2P Handbook Understand to Prevent: the military contribution to the prevention of violent conflict, updated in 2017, kindly follow the link. 

From October 2019 to July 2020, DCAF-ISSAT conducted a “Training Requirements Analysis” (TRA) for the European Union “Civilian Common Security and Defense Policy” (CSDP) missions in partnership with the Swedish Folke Bernadotte Academy and on behalf of the European Security and Defence College (ESDC) Executive Academic Board on SSR (EAB-SSR). The final report, endorsed by the EU Coordination Training Group and EU Member States in March 2021, recognizes key gaps and recommendations to EU member states to improve their support to security and justice advisors, including opportunities regarding talent retention and deployment systems.

Access the final report on Training Requirements Analysis for Civilian CSDP Missions by kindly following the link.