UN Launches Platform For Exchange Of Experience In Post-conflict Transitions

Tehran, Sept 23, IRNA - National institutions that create trust between citizens and the state by delivering political inclusion, security, justice and jobs are the most effective guard against conflict. “Peace building requires great flexibility, and approaches tailored to a given situation. Civilian capacities are crucially important, and we are taking steps to be able to deploy the right experts to the right place at the right time,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Many countries around the world now have experience in building and transforming national institutions after conflict or crisis, either at home or in their cooperation programs abroad. The UN on Friday launched a simple, practical on-line platform to make these experiences accessible to other countries now going through transitions. The platform, CAPMATCH, is open to both government and non-government organisations. It is part of the UN Civilian Capacities Initiative launched last year, a press release issued by the UN Information Center (UNIC) said here on Saturday. The initial launch version illustrates the type of requests and offers of experience which CAPMATCH aims to provide. The government of Liberia, for example, lays out the need for support in implementing its national capacity development strategy. The United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations describes the need for advisers to support the reform of police, justice and corrections institutions in countries where UN missions are helping to consolidate post-conflict progress. CAPMATCH aims to capture diverse experiences, in particular from the global South. The first participants include expertise from Indonesia, South Africa, Morocco, Brazil, Egypt, Benin, Kenya, Thailand and Nigeria – as well as organisations from Norway, Canada, Germany, the UK, Sweden and Switzerland who maintain networks of skilled individuals from both North and South. There are participants who represent some of the most extreme situations of recovery from conflict where national institutions needed to be built from scratch in very difficult circumstances, such as Rwanda or Timor Leste - as well as experiences from peace processes and democratic transitions where institutions were strong but needed to be transformed to serve citizens equally and protect human rights, such as in Chile, the Czech Republic, the Spanish democratic transition of the 1970s, the Northern Ireland peace process, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The principle underlying CAPMATCH is one of equal partnership between countries, recognizing that there is no single model for institution-building, and that countries may want to look at several different types of experience and adapt these to their own national contexts. Countries can be both requestors and providers of expertise; Cote d'Ivoire, for example, offers to share its experience of its first post-conflict election process, but also notes its desire for further external exchanges in continuing to build the functions of its Independent Electoral Commission. Timor Leste offers its experience in public finances and oil revenue management, while also requesting expertise in vocational training and job creation. The United Nations is seeking to involve a wide range of partners in CAPMATCH, including government agencies with specialized sectoral experience, NGOs small and large, and diaspora associations./end