Institutions of Civil Conflict Management

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The general problem is that the effect of civil conflict management with respect to preventing violent conflict can hardly be verified. There are a number of projects and institutions in the field of civil conflict management in Germany – little known to the public – which have had a tremendous impact with comparatively little funding, thus saving enormous costs.

These include:

ZIF: The Center for International Peace Operations in Berlin was established in June 2002. ZIF’s core mandate is to build a pool of about 1,000 German civilian professionals for short- and medium-term deployment in peacekeeping and election monitoring missions conducted by the UN, EU, and OSCE. With its combination of recruitment and training of personnel, deployment support, and analysis, ZIF is unique.

ZIVIK: The project for Civil Conflict Management is organized by the Institute for Foreign Relations and funded by the Foreign Ministry. ZIVIK serves as an intermediary for non-governmental organizations working in the field of civil conflict management, to facilitate their access to public funds. It has supported Peace Brigades International in Colombia, which escorts human rights activists; a dialogue process with moderate Islamists in Tajikistan; demobilization and reintegration projects; and democratic media. In 2005, the activities of the Institute for Foreign Relations received approximately two million Euros in funding.

ZFD: The Civil Peace Service was founded at the initiative of peace groups and has been supported by the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development since 1999. Qualified experts support local partners in crisis regions, promoting mutual understanding at the lower and middle levels of society.

DSF: The coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens resumed federal funding of peace research. The German Foundation for Peace Research supports research projects and the work of young scholars. In 2003, the DSF, for the first time, received a million Euros in funding from the Defense Ministry.

CIVPOL: The participation of German police in UN and EU international peacekeeping operations has become an important, if relatively unknown, permanent mission. In 2008, Germany sent 245 police to support international peacekeeping missions in Kosovo, Sudan, Liberia, Georgia, Ukraine, Bosnia, Palestine, and Afghanistan.

GTZ: The German Society for Technical Cooperation has been commissioned by the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development to set up a project for Crisis Prevention and Conflict Management. Its focus is on elaborating concepts and instruments for crisis prevention, conflict management, and peace development, as well as their application to development cooperation.

Sources: www.ifa.de/zivik/; www.zif-berlin.org/
www.ziviler-friedensdienst.org/ 
www.civpol.org/ 
www.bundesstiftung-friedensforschung.de/ 
www.gtz.de/de/themen/uebergreifende-themen/krisenpraevention/3947.htm


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