John Karlsrud

With a little help from my friends: cultural affinity in regional support for capacity development in South Sudan

Triangular co-operation for government capacity development in South Sudan

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) initiative provides 199 civil service support officers (CSSOs) to South Sudan, where they are twinned with counterparts across many ministries and sectors to rapidly develop core government capacity in a coaching and mentoring scheme. These CSSOs come from the civil services of Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, and are seconded for two-year terms. The initiative resonates well with the UN Civilian Capacity reform process and the calls for more use of regional capacity, and more flexible and bottom-up approaches when supporting countries emerging from conflict. The initiative is a promising and potentially innovative model of triangular co-operation for capacity development for four reasons. Firstly, it provides a model of large-scale support to rapid capacity development in core government functions. Secondly, the use of regional capacity to a certain degree mitigates the potential resentment that capacity support can generate when external experts are brought into capacity-poor environments. Thirdly, the programme already shows evidence of impact on core practices such as establishing strategic plans, drafting policies and supporting their development. Finally, there seems to be a strong ownership of the programme by the government of South Sudan and many of the twins.

CIVCAP, Emerging Powers and the Global South: Evidence for a New Phase of Engagement

Gender-Sensitive Protection and the Responsibility to Prevent: Lessons from Chad

Contextualizing peacebuilding activities to local circumstances: Local-level peacebuilding in South Sudan, Liberia and Haiti

Civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict – a case study of OPEN

Civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict The IGAD Initiative in South Sudan: a case study in the context of the OPEN framework This policy brief calls attention to the IGAD Initiative in South Sudan as a capacity development project that offers important lessons learned for the international state and peace-building community. The initiative embodies many of the recommendations found in recent UN and OECD recommendations regarding the provision of civilian capacity in the aftermath of conflict. In the United Nations context, the issue of civilian capacity re-emerged as a priority when the UN Secretary-General’s 2009 report on ‘Peacebuilding in the Immediate Aftermath of Conflict’ concluded that “a review needs to be undertaken analysing how the UN and the international community can help to broaden and deepen the pool of civilian experts to support the immediate capacity development needs of countries emerging from conflict”. Earlier this year, Security Council Resolution 2086 (2013) on multidimensional peacekeeping encouraged “(…) national governments, the United Nations, regional and sub-regional organizations to continue to use existing civilian expertise and also to broaden and deepen the pool of civilian capacities for peacebuilding in the immediate aftermath of conflict, including from countries with relevant experience in post-conflict peacebuilding or democratic transition, giving particular attention to mobilizing capacities from developing countries and from women (…)” The brief is published as part of the outcome from the International Capacity Research Initiative (ICRI). ICRI is a co-funded research cooperation on capacity development in fragile states between the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS); the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office Office (UNPBSO); Noref; and the Training for Peace programme (TfP) at the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs (NUPI).

FN må reformeres

Casting the net too deep and too wide? UN local peacebuilding-peacekeeping nexus in South Sudan

Offering the diagnosis, but lacking the medicine: UN local peacebuilding-peacekeeping nexus in Haiti

UN local peacebuilding and transition in Haiti: Contextualizing early peacebuilding activities to local circumstances. Haiti case-study field report