EUCTI’s Training Catalogue gained a new addition – Protection of Civilians course!
How and why? It is a well-known fact by now that EUCTI provides need-based training for personnel already deployed to civilian crisis management (CCM) missions abroad and people working in the international organisations active in the field of CCM (such as UN, OSCE and AU). When mission asks, EUCTI answers. And this is exactly what happened. The EUCTI Secretariat was contacted by the HR representatives of EU Advisory Mission in Ukraine (EUAM Ukraine) who identified aforementioned training as one that needs to be addressed in the current situation. EUCTI responded.
More concretely, our Slovenian partner Centre for European Perspective (CEP) responded. Four-day-long online Protection of Civilians, or PoC in short, course targeting EUAM Ukraine staff will be an adaptation of the course CEP offers to policing forces in UN missions and operations in the scope of its Peace Operations Training Centre (more about POTC here).
Between May 23 and May 26, up to 25 participants will gain basic knowledge in PoC, learn about historical and recent developments in the field and get familiarized with PoC legal framework. Through interactive lessons they will understand how the PoC mandate is implemented in different missions, understand its main challenges, and identify good practices.
It is crucial for mission members to understand how conflict affects civilians as they have increasingly become victims of armed conflict. Therefore, peacekeepers and other professionals with relevant tasks need to be well-informed and well-prepared to protect and address harm to civilians in a timely and concrete manner. Such training courses help missions to achieve just that and to increase their overall preparedness to respond to and mitigate consequences conflicts have on the civilian population.
