Special Needs of Women and Children in Conflict: Training for UNMISET

Summary
In October 2003, two largely identical three-day training courses on the special needs of women and children in conflict and post-conflict situations were organized by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) for the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET). The seminars were held in East Timor’s capital Dili from 15 to 17 and 20 to 22 October 2003.

The evaluations and recommendations in this report are based on UNITAR’s observations during the seminars and, in particular, on oral and written comments received from the lecturers and the participants, who were encouraged to give feedback to UNITAR throughout the courses and to complete a detailed evaluation questionnaire at the end of each seminar.

The full text of this evaluation report (including statistics) can be downloaded here.

Project Framework
The seminars were part of UNITAR’s Training Programme for Civilian Personnel in Peacekeeping Operations on the Special Needs of Women and Children in Conflict, which was developed as a three-year initiative by UNITAR in 2001 and successfully launched with two seminars for UNMIBH in Sarajevo in December 2001. Each year, UNITAR organizes training courses for civilian personnel of two or three peacekeeping operations. UNMEE (Ethiopia/Eritrea), MONUC (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and UNMIK (Kosovo) are three other missions that have already received training. The operation targeted after UNMISET is going to be UNAMA (Afghanistan).

The courses are designed to provide civilian personnel of peacekeeping operations with tailor-made training on the special needs of women and children in order to enhance the professional preparedness of civilian peacekeeping staff who deal with societies in and after conflict. The training familiarizes the participants with the specific needs, human rights, potentials and situations of women and children during armed conflict, repatriation, resettlement, reintegration, post-conflict reconstruction and peace-building.

This training programme is being funded by the Swiss government through the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (an international foundation created under the framework of Swiss participation in the Partnership for Peace) and by the United Nations Foundation (UNF), through the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP).

Familiarize civilian peacekeeping staff with the specific needs of women and children during armed conflict, repatriation, resettlement, reintegration as well as post-conflict reconstruction efforts;

Analyze international legal standards that provide protection for women and children in conflict situations;

Refresh the participants' knowledge in selected areas of humanitarian, refugee and international human rights law;

Raise their awareness for the the demographic structure of war torn-societies;

Make them understand the important role that women play as partners in assistance operations, during reconstruction, reconciliation and peace-building;

Expose them to the culture, history and social norms of the host country's society with a focus on gender relations;

Provide training on the social behaviour required to deal with their local female counterparts in daily encounters in the field and in contacts with the local governmental and administrative structures;

Increase their understanding for the difficulties of operating in a cross-cultural environment and, thus, help them to become reliable and responsible members of multi-dimensional peacekeeping operations;

Look at the current reconstruction and development process in East Timor with a focus on women and children.

Participation
In total, 66 participants attended the two courses. 51% of them were women. Previous experience has shown that participants will often not show up at a training event if they are instructed (“ordered”) by their supervisors to attend a seminar. Consequently, UNITAR and the UNMISET Office of Gender Affairs, which received and screened all applications for participation, opted for a system of voluntary attendance: all UNMISET staff members were informed by e-mail broadcast that the seminars would take place and were invited to apply if interested. Obviously, applicants were advised to obtain the approval of their supervisors, too. Although organizers can congratulate themselves and release impressive statistics if several applicants compete for each available place, from the participants’ point of view it is of course preferable if all persons genuinely interested in the seminar do actually receive a place. In UNMISET the numbers happened to match almost perfectly and 90% of all applicants could be granted a place in one of the seminars.

In line with the guidelines governing the training programme, many participants were junior or mid-level civilian UNMISET staff members. As was actually intended, only some of them dealt exclusively with women’s or children’s issues as a part of their professional duties.

On 27 October 2003, a three-hour “wrap-up briefing” was organized, at the specific request of the mission leadership and the UNMISET Gender Focal Point, for senior UNMISET and UN staff members who would not have been able to attend three days of training. The audience was first informed of the purpose, target group and methodology of the UNITAR seminars as well as of their place in peacekeeping training. Afterwards, all trainers gave brief summaries of their presentations, emphasized their main messages and commented on the feedback drawn from the discussions with the participants. Of 38 persons invited to the briefing, about 20 attended the event. Filling a whole afternoon with the briefing was perhaps overly ambitious as most participants did not stay until the end. Therefore, it may be prudent to offer even shorter briefings to the senior staff of other peacekeeping operations in the future.

Although the majority of participants were international UNMISET staff working in Dili, several local UNMISET staff members as well as a few persons from duty stations outside Dili took part in the seminars, too. A limited number of participants who were not UNMISET staff members (East Timorese government and NGO staff) also attended the seminars.

Although not covered by UNITAR’s training mandate, a few Civilian Police Officers, training officers of the peacekeeping forces and UN Military Observers are normally invited to these training courses, and the UNMISET seminars were no exception. They agreed with their civilian colleagues that their presence added crucial new perspectives to the training and helped both sides to better understand each other’s concerns and working methods.

Methodology and Training Material
The two UNITAR seminars were identical in content. It is standard practice of UNITAR to organize between two and four seminars per peacekeeping operation to reach a reasonably high number of participants, yet keep the number of persons per seminar manageable in view of the frequent discussions, exercises and role-plays that are built into the training sessions. At the beginning of the course, each participant was given a binder of background reading material for further self-study, which contained academic essays, official UN documents, fact sheets, reports, case studies, public information material, printed versions of visual presentations used during the seminars, etc. This package had been produced by UNITAR in close cooperation with the lecturers and their organizations. Many trainers distributed additional material during their own presentations.

To a large extent, the training seminars for UNMISET relied on lecturers who were based in East Timor. Several trainers as well as participants had been present in East Timor continuously since 1999 and were thus extremely knowledgeable about the local situation, which lead to a high quality of the training content. After a test run in Kosovo, where the UNITAR seminars relied heavily on local trainers (which presented some difficulties but overall led to encouraging results), several non-international trainers taught in East Timor, too. They either gave their own presentations or formed teaching teams with expatriate colleagues. From a capacity-building perspective, the use of local lecturers rather than expatriates is an initiative that deserves full support. Lack of language skills sometimes presents a problem and the use of interpreters in such a situation can easily create barriers and destroy the participatory and spontaneous nature of a training event. Luckily, this was not a problem because the Timorese trainers were all fluent in English, and this despite the fact that English is not at all the most common foreign language taught or studied in East Timor.

Interagency Cooperation
The successful implementation of these courses was mainly due to a well-functioning cooperation between UNITAR, the Civilian Training Section of DPKO in New York, UNMISET’s Training Cell, and – above all – UNMISET’s Gender Focal Point Fernanda Tavares. UNMISET’s Office of the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, whose staff happens to include one person seconded from UNITAR to UNMISET, offered frequent support on an informal basis. All this help proved vital for the administrative and logistical preparation of the seminars since there was a limit to the number of tasks that could be handled by UNITAR in Geneva, thousands of miles away from the training venue. UNMISET’s Gender Focal Point was instrumental in developing the seminar schedule together with UNITAR and in liaising with lecturers based in East Timor. Fernanda Tavares also handled the mundane but crucial task of dealing with the applications of potential participants. As usual within the framework of UNITAR’s seminars for peacekeeping operations, cooperation partners outside the peacekeeping mission, namely UNICEF, UNHCR and the ICRC, willingly collaborated by sending trainers to the seminars and by supplying training material.

Although the seminars were financed with funds from UNITAR’s programme budget, substantial in-kind contributions (staff working time, ground transport in the mission area, equipment and supplies) were made by UNMISET. UNMIK funded the participation of the Chief of the UNMIK Office of Gender Affairs, who attended one seminar as an observer, adding a welcome comparative perspective to the training event.

TRAINING MODULES

AN INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN CONFLICT AND POST-CONFLICT ZONES
Corey Levine
Initially, Ms. Levine gave an overview of international human rights treaties, non-binding international instruments, domestic standards (such as the constitution of East Timor and UNTAET Regulations) and political mechanisms (e.g. thematic Special Representatives of the UN Secretary-General) that offer protection to women and children. In group exercises, the participants were then guided to discover the specific obstacles to gender equality and to children achieving their rights that existed in post-conflict societies and in East Timor in particular. In discussing the problems encountered by children, the participants came up with a list that was typical for many countries emerging from war or underdevelopment: a lack of educational opportunities and social services, an obligation to contribute to the family income, continuing violence in the family and the society, gender stereotyping that prevents girls from breaking out of traditional roles, and inadequate laws or enforcement of legal norms. The debate finally shifted to domestic violence, a phenomenon often rife during and after conflicts, and to the question where United Nations staff working in such an environment should draw the line between an (allowed and acceptable) “cultural practice” and a (prohibited and punishable) crime. Although the participants recognized the problems in defining a clear threshold, they suggested using human rights standards as guidance, thereby reinforcing the UN’s commitment to universal standards.

GENDER IN PEACEKEEPING
Fernanda Tavares, UNMISET Gender Focal Point
In her presentation, Ms. Tavares defined gender as “socially constructed roles, attitudes and values” associated with men and women “not because of their biological differences, but because of the way society is organized.” She explained the relationship between gender and culture and described how violent conflict can affect and transform gender relationships. An appeal was made to the participants – especially to men – not to perceive gender as a threat to their status, but rather as an opportunity for social progress, an indispensable tool for peacekeepers and a concept whose understanding could greatly enhance the effectiveness of peacekeeping operations. Ms. Tavares explained that this was closely linked to the nature of modern conflicts, with enormous civilian casualties, specific humanitarian needs of women and children and an increase in gender-specific human rights violations and war crimes. Rather than dwell on the UN’s official definition of gender mainstreaming, she called on the participants to simply remember that this concept meant respecting the concerns and experiences of men and women in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all activities. Lastly, Ms. Tavares outlined her own role as UNMISET’s Gender Focal Point and described existing gender structures in the government, the NGO community and the UN System in East Timor so as to facilitate networking between these experts.

GENDER-SENSITIVE BEHAVIOUR IN AN INTERCULTURAL WORK ENVIRONMENT
Ivete de Oliveira, Catholic Institute for International Relations
In what was essentially a plea for understanding East Timor’s extraordinary situation, Ms. de Oliveira was not afraid to speak to the seminar participants as a “biased” Timorese and explained poignantly how her country had been subject to foreign influences of (Portuguese) colonizers, (Asian) traders and (Indonesian) occupiers for centuries, most of whom were male and many of whom had relationships with Timorese women, often without accepting moral responsibility or giving material support. Pointedly, Ms. de Oliveira described her nation as a traumatized community that was not sure any more whether to view its latest (benevolent) “invaders,” namely the United Nations, as saviors of the people or destroyers of their culture. However, she also recognized a desperate need for enlightened thinking in her own society, a deeply chauvinist culture clinging to discriminating practices (e.g. the dowry system, which tends to reinforce subconscious perceptions that women are little more than property), full of social jealousy (directed against "rich" foreigners and, in particular, Timorese women holding comparatively well-paid jobs with international organizations or foreign businesses) and obsessed with suspicion (in the perception of the ordinary population, all relationships between Timorese women and foreign men are automatically assumed to be sexual), all of which leads to grave social problems, e.g. a horrifying level of domestic violence. In the discussion that followed, this polarity was mirrored: the participants expressed genuine sympathy for a host population expecting a high degree of cultural sensitivity from the foreigners and condemned the unacceptable conduct of “black sheep” in the expatriate community. At the same time, they called upon the East Timorese to critically examine their own society, culture and behaviour and recognize the need for, and benefit of, certain changes.

POST-CONFLICT: WORKING WITH TRAUMATIZED COMMUNITIES
Kieran Dwyer, Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation
Mr. Dwyer began his training module with a simple role-play that helped the participants realize that humanitarian action by the international community frequently benefits only a minority of the target population, and then often not the most vulnerable persons. He again stressed Ivete de Oliveira’s earlier point that East Timor was an exceptionally traumatized country with a militarized society whose younger members knew nothing but violence. Throughout the 25 years of Indonesian occupation the Timorese had had no opportunity to come to grips with the violence surrounding the 1975 invasion. When in 1999 people finally began to see light at the end of the tunnel and congratulated themselves at having survived over two decades of hardship, the post-referendum carnage hit them with particular severity. Mr. Dwyer demanded two practices from UN peacekeepers: open eyes, by putting oneself in other people’s shoes, and a bit of “homework,” by studying the history of the country that one would be posted in. He argued that to do meaningful and responsible work in East Timor one sometimes had to abandon lofty UN concepts like timetables or action plans and learn a few simple truths – from the massive scale of the conflict and the impossibility of enforcing reconciliation to the barriers that may prevent women from seeking counselling, be they cultural (lack of husband’s permission) or practical (lack of transport). Mr. Dwyer encouraged his colleagues, and peacekeeping staff in general, to work hand in hand with local organizations, from whose practical experience and local knowledge the UN could profit greatly. Such cooperation should be in a spirit of mutual respect and openness and despite the general advice to always be culturally sensitive the UN should not shy away from, for example, constructively challenging the legitimacy and working methods of Timorese institutions dominated by males.

ICRC: MISSION AND MANDATE
ICRC ACTIVITIES IN EAST TIMOR 1979-2003
Simon Robins, Delegate, International Committee of the Red Cross (Dili)
Mr. Robins briefly introduced the ICRC’s worldwide mission and mandate, and its activities to protect and assist victims of armed conflict in East Timor. He described how the ICRC (initially through its office in Jakarta) had been engaged in the conflict since 1975, offering assistance to displaced and deported persons in the 1980s, finally establishing a permanent presence in Dili from 1988 until the emergency evacuation of all expatriate staff on 6 September 1999, only to return a week later, even before the arrival of INTERFET troops. Mr. Robins outlined how the ICRC activities in East Timor had evolved from emergency response (such as reestablishing medical services in Dili in September 1999) to sustainable projects, e.g. supporting the creation of a national Red Cross Society and teaching international humanitarian law to the East Timorese army and police.

WOMEN AND WAR: THE SITUATION, RIGHTS AND NEEDS OF WOMEN IN ARMED CONFLICT
Letitia Anderson, Women and War Project, International Committee of the Red Cross
Ms. Anderson then presented the ICRC’s Women Facing War study, which analyzes the impact of armed conflict on women in order to heighten awareness of the plight of women and of the protection to which they are entitled. Through a series of emotionally strong, at times shocking, video clips produced by the ICRC the participants were made acutely aware of the multi-faceted roles of women in conflict situations: they experience war in a multitude of ways, be it as refugees or victims of land mines or sexual violence, or take on roles as combatants (voluntarily or involuntarily), courageous humanitarian activists or heads of households. The material distributed included practical examples derived from the ICRC’s experience of working with women in situations of armed conflict, giving participants an opportunity to engage in small group discussions on best practices and lessons learned from the examples and to share their findings. The participants analyzed stereotypes of men and women in wartime and discussed whether women are in fact more vulnerable than men. They eventually discovered that women in conflict situations often accept new roles, are a source of strength in their communities and need support in this regard. Lastly, the participants were briefed on the most important elements of international law, such as the general and specific protections afforded to women under international humanitarian law, the categorical prohibition of all forms of sexual violence and the relationship between international humanitarian law and the law of human rights.

THE ICRC’S TRACING AND MISSING ACTIVITIES
Simon Robins, Delegate, International Committee of the Red Cross (Dili)
Giving more examples of the ICRC’s work in East Timor, Mr. Robins described how the ICRC restores family links by tracing persons separated through conflict and how it attempts to establish the fate of civilians and combatants who have gone missing and are often feared dead. He explained the painstaking process of collecting data, matching pieces of information that belong together and restoring contact – be it through traditional Red Cross Message letters or state-of-the-art satellite phones – between persons that have become separated through displacement or detention. He also stressed the crucial role of local authorities, which are often unwilling or slow to furnish information, especially in conflicts where lots of persons have “been disappeared,” yet are obliged under international humanitarian law to assist in clarifying the fate of missing persons and would constantly be reminded by the ICRC of this duty.

SEPARATED CHILDREN
Sandra Langenbach, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Dili
Initially, Ms. Langenbach described that 4500 children had become separated from their parents during the 1999 conflict, either by coincidence (the general chaos that reigned in East Timor), through criminal acts (abductions by military forces) or even deliberate and well-meaning action by parents who gave their children into the care of educational institutions or relatives who lived outside the conflict zone for greater safety. Ms. Langenbach explained that once the background of the separation and the situation of the child, parents and caretaker had been assessed, UNHCR (in cooperation with Red Cross Societies or reliable NGOs) would re-establish communication or even arrange visits between all persons concerned and assist the families in finding a solution in the best interest of the child. The participants learned of the many pitfalls in this process: the inaccessibility of children sent to distant islands of the Indonesian archipelago presented logistical challenges. Some children felt completely “at home” in their caretaker’s family, enjoyed their educational opportunities in Indonesia and had no desire to return to East Timor. Finally, Ms. Langenbach stressed the importance of follow-up visits to reunited children to verify that previous assessments reflected the reality and not a fictional scenario, and that the children were being reintegrated successfully and treated well.

TRAUMA MANIFESTATIONS BY STAFF & DISASTER RESPONSE
Betty Duhaylongsod, UNMISET Staff Counsellor (on 16 October 2003)
Alain Beaudoin, UNSECOORD Stress Counsellor (on 21 October 2003)
This training module had been added to the seminar to remind the participants of the dual presence of stress symptoms in East Timor: in the population traumatized by years of conflict, and in the UN staff shaken by terrorist attacks on their colleagues and organization in Iraq in August 2003. Describing the physical, emotional and cognitive symptoms of traumatic stress, both trainers comforted the participants that traumatic stress is a normal reaction of normal persons to an abnormal event: a disturbance in the balance between thought processes and emotional processes caused by a crisis. Nevertheless, they warned, neglecting early intervention (“emotional first aid”) and leaving exposure to “critical incident stress” untreated could lead to later problems such as posttraumatic stress disorder. The trainers stressed the importance of dual support for trauma victims: a patient and sincere counsellor, but also the trauma victim’s own strengths, self-care and self-confidence. Lastly, they described trauma treatment as a process that ought to be both professional and humble, with a counsellor’s responsibility to establish his competence, realistically acknowledge his own limitations, and explain the purpose of any intervention to the patient.

INTRODUCTION TO THE HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION IN TIMOR-LESTE POST-1999
Kalhari Hewage, Human Rights Officer/Capacity-Building Team, Human Rights Unit, UNMISET
To set the tone for the afternoon’s human rights-related case discussions, Ms. Hewage asked the seminar participants for their own definitions of human rights and explained the links between human rights and responsibilities. She then outlined the main human rights problems in East Timor and the audience discovered that many of them had a marked gender dimension: domestic violence, the traumatized state of the country’s population, religious intolerance, the male-dominated traditional justice system and unequal access to resources and opportunities. To illustrate the ever-changing nature of human rights challenges, the problem of trafficking in humans, which is becoming a worrying issue in East Timor, was also debated.

CHILDREN IN TIMOR-LESTE - THEIR PAST EXPERIENCE AND CURRENT SITUATION:
1) WHAT ARE CHILD RIGHTS?
2) CHILD PROTECTION AND CHILDREN IN AND AFTER CONFLICTS
3) ANALYSIS OF PROBLEMS IN THE CURRENT POST-CONFLICT SITUATION; UNICEF’S STRATEGIES AND EXAMPLES OF ITS WORK
Johanna Eriksson-Takyo, UNICEF
Dulce de Jesus Soares, UNICEF
In this training module, the participants were initially asked to list what children “want” and what they “need.” By then looking at the Convention on the Rights of the Child and arranging its articles into clusters of similar rights, the participants discovered that most needs of children are also their legal entitlements. They thus made the conceptually important step of moving from seeing children as needy to seeing children as having rights – a far more powerful position in legal theory. In working groups, the participants were invited to list the effects that wars have on children and recognized that in armed conflicts all child rights are at risk of being violated. The UNICEF trainers then took a closer look at the phenomenon of child soldiers in East Asia and in East Timor, where combatants mostly aged between 15 and 18 (but occasionally as young as 10) had been used by both the Indonesian occupiers and the liberation fighters, and the diverse circumstances and motivations through which they became involved in armed conflict voluntarily or against their will. The participants learned of UNICEF’s five global strategic areas for the period 2002 to 2005: girls’ education; Integrationd Early Childhood Development; Imunization “plus”; Figthing HIV/AIDS; and Improved Protection of Children from Violence, Exploitation, Abuse and Discrimination. The UNICEF trainers explained how all priority areas are addressed in emergency situations, for example through “child-friendly spaces,” immunization campaigns even in war zones, peer-to-peer education on HIV/AIDS, and improved protection of children from violence, abuse and exploitation. Lastly, some of the problems that affect children in East Timor, a nation with a higher percentage of children (60%) in the population than any other developing country, were discussed: unsatisfactory school attendance and a lack of educated teachers, inadequate health care (affecting maternal mortality and infant mortality), a male-dominated society that deems violence against women and girls acceptable, and a near-total failure of the parents to register births with the civil authorities.

CASE DISCUSSIONS:
1) DISCRIMINATION OF TIMORESE WOMEN IN WORKING ENVIRONMENTS
2) CHILDREN OF MIXED PARENTS (TIMORESE WOMEN AND PEACEKEEPERS)
3) CULTURAL (IN-) SENSITIVITY OF EXPATRIATES
Filomena Barros Dos Reis, Director, Peace and Democracy Foundation, Timor-Leste
Kalhari Hewage, Human Rights Officer/Capacity-Building Team, Human Rights Unit, UNMISET
TIn this training module linking intercultural awareness and human rights, the participants were initially asked to discuss, and critically reflect on, the respect that expatriates show for the ideas, opinions and knowledge of East Timorese colleagues in the UN work environment, and their involvement in decision-making processes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a majority of participants acknowledged that more should be done to respect and empower East Timorese colleagues. However, it was also discovered that cultural insensitivity existed on both sides, as experienced by expatriate female supervisors whose male Timorese staff were not used to receiving instructions from women and would treat them with disrespect.

The discussion then tackled the delicate subject of children fathered by expatriates with Timorese women, with the father often leaving the mission area after a while and abandoning woman and child without support. In their debate, the seminar participants discovered the multifaceted reality of this phenomenon: this ranged from the possible interpretation of such a situation (“morally” repugnant behaviour of a private person or a human rights violation?) to the search for explanations (unavoidable in mission life?) and the fact that the women in question often lack support not only from the child’s father, but even their own society, which discriminates and often ostracizes them as amoral women. The participants eventually agreed that there were proactive ways for the UN to improve this situation, beyond the all-too-easy blaming of “misbehaving” individuals or “traditional-chauvinistic” societies: training and awareness-raising among locals and expatriates alike, support for building a social security system, and practical assistance and encouragement for women wanting to make formal complaints and enforce their legal entitlements.

Ending on a slightly lighter note, the participants finally spent some minutes discussing expatriates’ behaviour that violated nobody’s rights, but was seen as culturally offensive in traditional societies, e.g. not respecting dress codes. Participants acknowledged that although they would not necessarily agree with the local population on certain issues, the anguish felt by the Timorese was very real and needed to be addressed. While all agreed that heightened cultural sensitivity could never be a bad thing, some found that it was high time to ask a few hard questions in a host country whose value system deemed bikinis morally offensive and shameful yet found wife-beating normal and acceptable. Likewise, a heated debate centered around the question whether overly “progressive” and “modern” behaviour by foreigners would embarrass and confuse local women and children or whether, on the contrary, this might encourage and empower them. The participants defended both positions with equal eagerness, but agreed that it was impossible to predict which way the scales would eventually tip in East Timor.

Selected Comments from Participants
The participants completed a detailed evaluation questionnaire at the end of the seminars. Although most questions came with a pre-defined set of answers that participants could choose from, the majority of participants quite enthusiastically filled in the "Any comments?" sections on the questionnaire and added more specific comments, some of which are summarized or reproduced here.

General:

"To be done in all missions at least once a year and to be imposed on peacekeepers, at the early stage of the mission’s lifespan!”

"The course was too short. A minimum of five days would be needed."

"It was an eye opener. It has also inspired me to work closely with vulnerable persons back in [my home country] Zimbabwe, especially refugees from war-torn neighbouring countries.”

"Thank you very much for having me at this seminar! I have gained more in-depth knowledge regarding the plight of women and children in conflict situations.”

"Such seminars should be conducted more often, involving more members of the peacekeeping forces and UN Military Observers as the course discussed matters related to conflict situations.”

“I really encourage the organization of more programmes like this, maybe for a longer time, even if it is outside working hours! I have been in East Timor for three years and eight months so far, and this is the first time the mission gives me the chance to improve my knowledge. In East Timor, we don’t have the chance to get higher education, even distance education through internet is difficult so at some point we found that the time spent here has been a ‘black hole’ in our life regarding acquisition of knowledge, professional growing, etc. Very few staff members have the chance to go to training in Brindisi for example. Maybe instead of spending a lot of money in sending people to Italy, the budget for training should be spread among all of us, on training like this.”

"This is the first ‘staff-friendly’ seminar I’ve attended in my four years in this mission!"

Training modules and lecturers:

"The most powerful and memorable presentations were those that told stories, that gave palpable examples; not those that iterated abstract terms, intellectual expressions and intangibles. Best to focus on living, clear stories and examples!”

"Having Timorese colleagues as participants and lecturers was an important element of the training."

"All presentations raised important aspects touching women and children in armed conflict. The contribution of the audience proves that the lectures stimulated a reflection of the issues. There was a fruitful exchange of opinions!”

"There was often not enough time or opportunity for a conclusive debate."

“The exposure to the local Timorese culture and their influence and impact on the international community was most memorable."

"This training is about women and children in post-conflict time, yet in the 'Trauma Manifestations' module we ended up discussing our own condition [and staff problems], which is unnecessary and can be placed in another training programme.”

"The East Timor cultural sensitization sessions left some participants confused and contradicted the [progressive] gender mission of the UN.”

"The training material was well-prepared and reading it helped me to follow the different topics easily, hence they left a memorable impression."

"It was quite demanding to catch up with the presentations; much of the terminology was new to me."

Course objectives:

"I got a better idea about the current situation of women and children in general and East Timor especially.”

"The seminar invited the participants to learn and to think and they allowed us to have a clearer picture of the reality of this country”

"Maybe the seminar came too late, given that UNMISET will close down in May 2004. On the other hand, it enabled UNMISET to take stock of results achieved and of problems remaining, thus providing some useful guidance on which key activities should be carried on, under UNDP leadership, after the withdrawal of UNMISET."

"I still would like to find out how to implement or apply what I have learned, how to ensure gender mainstreaming and how to motivate support for women and children.”

Recommendations
Although UNITAR has no authority to make recommendations to UNMISET or other peacekeeping operations, it is worth recording the most frequent suggestions made by participants to UNITAR, UNMISET or peacekeeping missions in general. Other suggestions are based on UNITAR’s own observations and the wealth of experience gained by holding these seminars in several missions. It was recommended that the relevant stakeholders should:

Ensure that induction training for all newly arrived peacekeeping staff is available, mandatory and of high quality;

Organize training courses such as UNITAR’s seminars as early as possible after the deployment of a peacekeeping operation, and then repeat them at regular intervals;

Encourage national peacekeeping training centres to include gender and child protection in their prey-deployment training curriculum;

Offer further and more intensive training, for a more specialized audience, on selected topics of the seminars;

Offer “wrap-up briefings” to the senior management level of the peacekeeping operation and the UN system in the target country, but with their length limited to the absolute minimum, which may lead to better attendance rates (though, admittedly, even less content);

Organize information campaigns that advise the population of the host country on the mission’s mandate and working methods as well as the likely social, cultural and economic consequences of the arrival of a large multinational peacekeeping operation;

Earnestly investigate whether it is feasible (or even necessary) to consult and work with local structures and community activists even in the early phases of a peacekeeping mission, in times of political upheaval and in emergency response operations, when such integrative approaches may appear to be an unaffordable luxury, yet collaborators with local knowledge are particularly crucial;

Create institutional memory and improve handover procedures to prevent frustration in local experts, who, in extreme cases, face a new UN counterpart every six months and discover that each time this person has received no on-the-job training from his or her predecessor;

Set up an effective, confidential and easily approachable mechanism for persons in the host country population to lodge legitimate complaints against members of the peacekeeping operation, and take forceful disciplinary action against serious breaches of the Code of Conduct;

Likewise, develop a system-wide support mechanism to deal with children of mixed parentage;

In creating the working environment in peacekeeping operations, pay attention to the needs of female staff members.