GPPi contributes to police peacekeeping conference in Loccum
Between 30 October and 1 November 2013, GPPi Associate Director Philipp Rotmann contributed to a workshop on German engagement in international peacekeeping missions, warning against taking the conceptual and practical challenges of police peacekeeping lightly.
Hosted by the Evangelische Akademie Loccum, the conference was headlined as “Schutzleute als Friedensmacht: Wie können deutsche Polizisten internationale Friedenseinsätze effektiver unterstützen?” (“Cops as a peace force: how can German police officers more effectively support international peacekeeping missions?”). The event brought the German police and peacekeeping communities together for a two-day discussion about barriers to and opportunities for greater contributions to international peace operations.
In his presentation, as part of a panel on “education, reflection, evaluation and networking,” Rotmann said that the practice of framing the mandates for German police officers as narrowly as possible should not make political decision-makers lose sight of the larger requirements and expectations of police peacekeeping in a conflict or post-conflict context. Even if a German contribution is clearly limited to a particular type of training, this contribution operates as part of a larger mission to help build or rebuild a police service after war – a task that is deeply political and not yet sufficiently understood by either academics or practitioners.
To meet the practical challenges of police peacekeeping, Rotmann argued, requires a greater investment in organizational learning, both at the level of international collaboration and in Germany itself. Based on findings of GPPi’s earlier work on organizational learning in peace operations, Rotmann said that a more solid basis for learning on police peacekeeping would require funding, standardized procedures for capturing experience and evaluating missions, a learning culture, and leadership both within police organizations and at the political level.
The discussion about conceptual development and learning went beyond the panel, which Rotmann shared with Bernd Poddig, head of training for international missions at the Federal Police Academy in Lübeck. Additional key contributors included Uwe Binias (Polizeipräsident, Lower Saxony), Karl-Peter Brendel (deputy minister of interior in North-Rhine Westphalia, retired), Edelgard Bulmahn (deputy speaker of the German Bundestag), Christoph Ehrentraut (federal ministry of the interior), Winfried Nachtwei (member of the German Bundestag, retired), Eckehart Wache (Bundespolizei) and Dieter Wehe (Inspekteur der Polizei, North-Rhine Westphalia).