Skills for multiagency responses to international crises

Overview Australian responses to international, complex emergencies and humanitarian crises, generated by natural disaster, conflicts or incidents, demand the coordinated responses of multiple civil-military-police actors and agencies. A scoping study of Australian government agency training needs in the latter half of 2013 indicated that stakeholder agencies continue to have difficulty in identifying and developing individual skills to enable people to operate effectively in a high-pressure crisis environment that requires an integrated civil-military-police response. Agencies highlighted the need to develop a ‘whole-of-government’ set of skills for civil-military-police interaction that would complement agency specific skills. In 2015, the Australian Civil-Military Centre (ACMC) commissioned Sustineo to undertake a project to address this gap. This report, based on Sustineo’s research and consultations, goes some way to identifying the skills needed for effective civil-military-police interaction. However, the list is not exhaustive. In fact, the report highlights the difficulty of articulating a specific set of multiagency, cross-cutting skills for civil-military-police interaction. Practitioners gave consistent advice that specific skills were less important than other factors in successful civil-military-police interaction. Skills and training are only one component of success. The factors that can facilitate and enhance civil-military-police interaction and the strategies required to address those factors are much broader. The report highlights some of these broader factors and how they interrelate. It identifies the interdependence of individual knowledge, skills and attributes, the value of building relationships, the importance of tolerance and understandings of difference and the need for trust and credibility. The report concludes that an individual’s ability to operate effectively in a civil-military-police environment is developed both prior to and during a mission or deployment and relates more to the type of person and their relationships than to specific skills. Generic skills and attributes for effective civil-military-police interaction Common and shared goals Situational awareness Understanding of whole-of-government Personal attributes such as flexibility, resilience and working in a team Professional skills, such as negotiation, mediation, conflict management and partnership brokering Existing professional relationships and networks Trust Self-awareness (and social and emotional intelligence) Tolerance of diversity (including of organisational differences and cultural diversity). The report identifies considerations for developing people for deployments and it is hoped that these will inform agencies’ training and development strategies. The findings support the ongoing work that the ACMC is undertaking to develop an Australian Government Preparedness Framework (the Framework). The Framework will draw together several streams of work that are interrelated, including this report, to further build Australia’s whole-of-government effectiveness in responding to disasters and complex emergencies overseas

International Actors and Internal Conflicts

Surveys the recent literature relating to conflict and mediation activities, and presents a range of options available to states, international organizations, regional organizations, and NGOs seeking to mediate internal conflicts

Coalition Modeling In Humanitarian Assistance Operations

Multinational operations are carried out to achieve military and diplomatic objectives in various regions. Such operations derive a great deal of benefits from sharing budgets, political legitimacy, sharing each national experience and technological resources, and so forth. However, a coalition, one structure of multinational operations, often involves serious challenges in such areas as command and control, logistic support, communication and language, training, and intelligence and information due to its ad hoc characteristics. This research reviews general problems in a coalition operation, and develops the Coalition Operation Planning Model to assist coalition commanders or staff in producing an efficient operational plan. In this model, goal programming is employed to formulate the coalition problems with multiple objectives. The proposed model is composed of three sub-models: the Coalition Mission-Unit Allocation Model, the Coalition Mission-Support Model, and the Coalition Mission-Unit Grouping Model. The first sub-model is designed to find an optimized resource allocation by applying the shortest path problem and effectiveness functions. The second sub-model is developed to obtain an optimized logistics support plan by using the multi-commodity network flow. Finally, the third sub-model is designed to combine small units into one workable independent unit by using the quadratic assignment problem. The models are demonstrated with a notional humanitarian assistance operation

The ROC Armed Forces and Civil Society in Natural Disaster Relief Operations—A Deepening Cooperation and the Establishment of Sound Disaster Relief System

The primary purpose of the design and build of military forces is to deal with traditional security threats, especially the military invasion from other country. Nowadays, such thinking is not enough for facing current non-traditional challenges caused by climate changes, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, as well as floods and landslides. Owing to the rapid deployment and effectiveness of military organization in case of crisis-whether manmade or natural, so any government of the world is increasingly relying on military forces than ever before. Taiwan is threatened by a number of natural disasters, including earthquakes, typhoons and landslides. Based on the concept of “active disaster relief,” the ROC Armed Forces has adopted the approach of “preparing for disasters in advance, deploying troops with an eye to disaster preparedness, and ensuring readiness for rescue operations,” in order to achieve quick response to emergencies and immediately provide relief to distressed civilians. Disaster relief is a complex and multidimensional work, so the military alone could not handle well all the needs and problems from society. In order to respond the natural disaster threats effectively to ROC national security. This paper aims to analyze the cooperation between ROC Armed Forces and civil society with expects to deepen such relation and to build a sound disaster relief system for saving lives

Care services, multinational companies and expanding European markets

Social services are becoming a major issue at European level although recognition of importance of social services as publicly-run services unclear. Multinational care companies are operating in several distinct European sub-markets. There have been limited mergers and acquisitions since 2007 but signs of consolidation. Private equity ownership still significant in this sector

Prioritizing humanitarian assistance in a complex emergency: a decision method for military forces

The article develops a decision support model for a military commander who has to determine what humanitarian assistance will be provided in cooperation with which civil organizations in peacekeeping situations. After an investigation of the current methods decision theory was used to develop an initial decision method, consisting of consecutive steps to inventory potential humanitarian tasks, to identify attributes to evaluate these tasks, and to actually prioritize the selected tasks using an extensive scorecard. The initial decision method and its tools were reviewed in-depth in a series of expert interviews, resulting in an improved decision method

Political Economy of Additional Development Finance

The paper considers the political obstacles and supports for additional development finance and a number of possible devices through which advantage may be taken of the supports and the obstacles circumvented. It emphasizes the need for effective negotiating alliances among developing-country governments that will draw on support from outside their own ranks. It gives particular attention to the 'innovative' methods by which funds might be mobilized by transnational activity for global disposal within a strategy for the progressive reduction of poverty. In order to eliminate one difficulty it outlines a possible arrangement through which funds so raised might be allocated.development finance, aid, Tobin Tax, global governance

Metrics for the Naval Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Operations

Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations are part of the Cooperative Strategy for the 21st Century Seapower of the United States (U.S.). In this research, we further investigate, through literature survey, whether any metrics can be defined and developed to enhance the efficacy and efficiency of HADR operations. Such measurement will be instrumental in successfully following a fundamental principle: ﾓIf we are going to do HADR anyway, then why not do it smartly.ﾔ In the past 2-3 decades, the United States Navy (USN) has been the active and principal supplier of disaster relief due to its many unique and critical capabilities (Apte, Yoho, Greenfield, & Ingram, 2013; Apte, Goncalves, & Yoho, 2016). Whether this effort will continue and be sustained in an environment of fiscal austerity and budget cuts is not given. Therefore, it is critical to identify resources the USN possesses, due to its core competencies and capabilities, that support humanitarian logistics, and to understand the USNﾒs readiness level to utilize these resources in the best possible way. The United States Marine Corps (USMC) can rapidly respond to disasters because it maintains high levels of readiness on a constant basis. The USMC provides critical resources for these missions through their Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs), which are flexible and adaptable enough to accomplish a wide range of operations, including non-combat missions (Apte & Yoho, 2014). Given the recent frequency of disasters around the world, it is probable that the occurrence of these events will continue, thus creating a demand for the relief capabilities. The MEUs have flexible and adept forces that can be deployed to austere environments while meeting urgent timelines (USMC, 2009).Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Progra

Ahead of the Curve: Insights for the International NGO of the Future

International NGOs have a unique and important role to play in addressing today's complex global challenges. But few of them are living up to their full potential. With support from the Hewlett Foundation, FSG researched how the most innovative INGOs are adapting to the disruptions in the global development sector and embracing four approaches to create greater impact

Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2013

[Excerpt] This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its Armed Forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes. It was compiled in part from various older lists and is intended primarily to provide a rough survey of past U.S. military ventures abroad, without reference to the magnitude of the given instance noted. The listing often contains references, especially from 1980 forward, to continuing military deployments, especially U.S. military participation in multinational operations associated with NATO or the United Nations. Most of these post-1980 instances are summaries based on presidential reports to Congress related to the War Powers Resolution. A comprehensive commentary regarding any of the instances listed is not undertaken here