Post Conflict Projects

Posted: Wednesday, 10 November 2010, New York Author: Department of Peacekeeping Operations Thirteen focal points for Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) across eight peace operations gathered in New York from 19 to 21 October for the pilot “Quick Impact Project Management for Peacekeepers” training course. As a joint endeavour of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Office of Human Resources Management (OHRM) in the Department of Management, the tailored project management course aimed to strengthen the capacity of QIPs programme managers and focal points in the implementation and oversight of QIPs. Notably, the course also provided a forum to host a policy consultation on the review of the DPKO / DFS Policy Directive on QIPs (2007). First introduced in the 2000 Brahimi Report, QIPs have been included in mission budgets since and are intended as instruments to promote confidence-building in either the mission, the mission mandate or the peace process. For the 2009-2010...

BalkanInsight.com: “Fellowship 2010: Taboo” invites you to a special section where you can find eight articles produced under the Balkan Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence programme. This series of reports is the result of the fellows’ four months of investigation, extensive research and travels across the Balkans and the EU. This year, the writers addressed the topic of taboo, tackling rooted beliefs and their transformation under pressures of modernity. The Fellowship programme, initiated by the Robert Bosch Stifting and ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, fosters quality reporting, encourages regional networking amongst journalists and advances in-depth coverage on complex issues that are central to the region as well as to the European Union. As the aim of this programme is to tackle the deficit of information and ensure easier information flow within the Balkans, and between the region and the EU, you are encourage...

Amidst criticisms against the United Nations, one man stands out like a light at the end of the tunnel. It is a pity, however, that his diplomatic prowess and leadership has been suddenly cut short when a suicide bomber managed to infiltrate the UN office in Baghdad in 2003. By time of his tragic death on Aug. 19, 2003, the Sergio Vieira de Mello Brazilian diplomat had spent nearly 35 years inside the U.N. system, sent from hellhole to hellhole as one of the international organization's most dependable troubleshooters. Representing the United Nations in Iraq, a job he reluctantly accepted at the behest of then Secretary-General Kofi Annan and George W. Bush's administration, was to be his final assignment in the field. He was, as biographer Samantha Power put it Monday at a Washington event previewing Sergio, the moving documentary based on her book, the world's "go-to guy." The film, which airs May 6 -- on HBO, of all places -- is both a celebration of Vieir...