Crisis management missions’ personnel are exposed to variety of risks and occupational hazards in their fieldwork. All large international organizations, be it the UN, the OSCE or the EU, face a common challenge in the field: the safety and security of their mission representatives. It is therefore of great importance to invest in specific training focused on awareness of security risks and challenges of missions’ environments.
The EU, which has become one of the most active International Organizations in deploying international field operations of different nature, has demonstrated an increased commitment to seriously address the issue of the protection of its personnel sent abroad. In order to achieve this goal, CEP is organising in the ENTRi framework its first HEAT course. Europe’s New Training Initiative for Civilian Crisis Management (ENTRi) is a unique capacity-building programme that was initiated in early 2011. It is funded by the European Commission (80%) and co-funded by its 13 implementing partners, each being from a different Member State of the European Union. ENTRi was created by the European Union’s Instrument for Stability and is guided by The Foreign Policy Instruments Service.
The security and safety of personnel is an area essential to crisis management regardless of a particular mission’s mandate. Equipping civilian personnel with the basic awareness tools on how to deal with such challenges and reduce the risk is part of the duty of care of both sending Organisations and recruiting States. Training curriculum therefore provides a comprehensive coverage of the relevant issues and is complemented with real-life simulations confronting key issues of such environments.
More information: Nina Čepon, Project Manager
