Global Public Policy Institute
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18 June 2007
GPPi contributes to "Public Administration meets Peacebuilding" conference in Konstanz
GPPi's Learning to Build Peace project team presented its work to a conference organized by the University of Konstanz (Wolfgang Seibel, Till Blume and Julian Junk) and the Center of International Peace Operations (ZIF) Berlin. The conference took place in Konstanz on 15-16 June 2007. Funding for the event was provided by the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF) which also sponsors GPPi’s work on peacebuilding.
Under the theme of "Public Administration meets Peacebuilding", the conference brought together distinguished leaders of peace operations with academics in the emerging field of organizational research on peacebuilding. Participants included Jacques Paul Klein (former SRSG in Eastern Slavonia, Bosnia and Liberia), Jan Pronk (former SRSG in Sudan and Dutch cabinet minister), Klaus Reinhardt (former KFOR Commander), Souren Seraydarian (former DSRSG in Liberia) and Peter Schumann (Regional Coordinator for Southern Sudan, UNMIS) as well as Ariane Berthoin Antal (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin), Rüdiger Klimecki (University of Konstanz), Keith G. Provan (University of Arizona), Volker Rittberger (University of Tübingen), Dirk Salomons (Columbia University), William Durch (Stimson Center, Washington DC) and Winrich Kühne (ZIF, Berlin).
GPPi's Thorsten Benner presented the institute's emerging work on organizational learning in the UN peacebuilding apparatus. The presentation focused on the huge learning challenge faced by peace operations and recent UN efforts to address this challenge by implementing state-of-the-art knowledge management and doctrine development systems. At the same time, Benner argued, the promise of making the UN a learning organization comes with potential pathologies. Therefore, "learning to build peace" cannot be a technocratic exercise of managerial improvement. Rather, it needs to form the basis for the appropriate contextualization of “lessons from experience” to new situations as well as a more informed debate and adversarial contestation of policies both within the UN and in member states.
The full conference program and list of participants can be found at the conference website.
A brief introduction to GPPi's research on "Learning to Build Peace?" can be found here.
For more information on GPPi's contribution, please contact Thorsten Benner.