The Training for Peace (TfP) in Africa Programme and Africa Peacebuilding Coordination Programme (APCP) at ACCORD have participated in the 2014 Peace Capacities (PeaceCap) Network’s Annual Partners Meeting. As South Africa’s representative in the Network, ACCORD’s participation in the meeting sought to further develop and strengthen civilian capacities in peacekeeping and peacebuilding in Africa to respond to Multidimensional peace support operations.
This Network (formerly CivCap) of civil society organisations was established with the aim of producing knowledge on and momentum for the mobilisation of civilian capacity available in the Global South for peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations. PeaceCap Network has a diverse set of members which consists of ACCORD (South Africa), Igarape Social (Brazil), United Services Institute (India), Centre for Strategic and International Studies Jakarta (Indonesia), Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (Norway), Istanbul Policy Centre (Turkey), Institute for Contemporary International Studies (Russia), Cairo Centre for Training on Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping in Africa (Egypt), and the Chinese Communist Party International Institute for Strategic Studies (China). ACCORD was represented by Ms Irene Limo – Senior Program Officer, Peacekeeping Unit.
The network which seeks to contribute to the mobilisation of civilian technical expertise to assist in post-conflict reconstruction convened this year’s Annual meeting from 8-10 July 2014. The meeting hosted by Istanbul Policy Center (IPC) of Sabançi University sought to inaugurate the PeaceCap Network, further developed opportunities for joined initiatives and also defined future goals of the Network. The agenda of the meeting focused on the current achievement of the PeaceCap Network thus far, and further analysed the potential of joint research on civilian peace capacities to be undertaken by the partners. These research is expected to inform policy and support other initiatives in developing civilian capacities in peacekeeping and peacebuilding. The thematic areas for the Network’s research are Civilian Capacities, Civilian Dimension of Peace Operations and Security Sector Reform.
This meeting provided ACCORD with the opportunity to engage with the relevant counterparts from other partner institutions in terms of exchanging information on existing capacities of the participating countries as well as sharing lessons learnt and opportunities for further strengthening civilian capacities. It also provided a platform through which ACCORD further strengthened its cooperation and synergies with the partners working on civilian capacities.
Such initiatives that contribute to the implementation of the civilian capacities processes are in line with the core goals of the TfP Programme at ACCORD and APCP Programme which seeks to significantly improve the civilian capacity of organisational structures within the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), African Union (AU) and UN, in preparing, managing and monitoring multidimensional peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations in Africa.
