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Short report on the meeting of the European Platform for Conflict Prevention and Transformation in Bilbao, March 17-19, 2005
Confidential version – only for NP member organisations
By Alessandro Rossi
Brussels, 30 March 2005
The meeting of the European platform in Bilbao had two main areas of discussion, partially overlapping: the (western) european contribution to the GPPAC process and the future of a European platform. The important meeting for the GPPAC process was the following International Steering Committee (where we weren’t admitted).
Background news
As you probably know, in September a “Millennium+5” UN Summit of Heads of State and Governments is foreseen. The agenda of that summit now includes three big points: 1) Collective Security; 2) Millennium Development Goals updatings; 3) UN reform. This puts the July conference and GPPAC in a different perspective, as Heads of State could have in their Septmber discussion on Collective Security inputs coming from the July conference. A short “lobbying document” is being prepared by the GPPAC secretariat to start lobbying in this direction the different national government.
GPPAC next steps
The main news about the NY July conference were included in the new leaflet (see attachment, tell me I f you have problems in opening it). Paul VanTongheren said that now UN Dep.Pol.Affairs stated that the conference is IN COOPERATION with them, not just hosted.
Structure: Basically, there will be two plenaries (with possible speakers such as Annan or his representatives), Panel Discussions (with Nobel prized, etc.), Working Groups (around ten per day, on proposals for the implementation of the Global Agenda), Workshops (more than ten per day, on topics non necessarily included in the Global Agenda; one on a “nonviolent peace force” was explicitly quoted by Paul VanTongheren). Suggestions on the working group issues should be done by us as soon as possible.
Participants: around 800/1000 invitees, cathegories being UN/Gov officials, INGOs, Think Tanks/Academies, Regional NGO delegations, “resource persons” (like Christine), even donors/foundations.
About reimbursements: no money foreseeable for northern participants, even not all the Southern ones have at the moment a reimbursement assured.
Media strategy: not enough staff in ECCP to assure a wide coverage, most of the effort left to national level GPPAC promoters, possible better results in September.
Global Action Agenda calendar (at that moment, see attachment): in April the first draft of the Global Agenda will be circulated, with a deadline for content feedbacks in May, the ISG will incorporate them and circulate before the end of May the final draft for “pre-endorsements”, in early July the final Agenda will be widely ditributed for endorsements.
Book launching: ECCP is completing an impressive book on “People building Peace-65 inspiring stories” and has just completed another one on CSOs’ peace initiatives in Asia. They will profit of NY conference to launch them, of course.
Strategy: the real problems seem to come from the non-existing donors’ financial contribution (at the moment) for the post-July GPPAC.
Our contribution: the working group “How to fill the gap between early warning and early action: civilian response teams and nonviolent peacekeeping” was very animated (Alessandro facilitating, Tim participating), and the discussion continued in a way with the following working group on concrete proposals to fill this gap. Some of the proposals agreed are in the annexed document at the end.
Legitimacy problem of the Steering Committee: even if openly raised in plenary, the ECCP presidency answered that ‘they are consulting as wide as possible”, somewhere not seizing the problem that in any region a mandate was asked to the CSO’s to choose representatives.
European platform’s future
The discussion was based on a preparatory document (see attachment), and the main subjects discussed were:
- how do we meet in the most useful way (assemblies or thematic meetings or other)
- how do we profit from our networking and how to sustain it
- which tasks shall the platform perform (more UN orioented, or sustaining national platforms, only informaiton sharing or also lobbying, etc.)
- how do we avoid overlapping with EPLO’s activities
Decision taken: to mandate a “task force” to draft a document with possible answers, to be circulated before the next meeting (probably in winter).
Annex
Proposals from the European platform working group discussion on
options for early response (in nowadays draft chapters 4.1 and 4.2)
(numbers/letters refer to the draft material at the basis of the future Global Action Agenda)
Bilbao, 18 March 2005
Gathered and phrased by Alessandro Rossi, arossi@nonviolentpeaceforce.org
General remark on existing chapters: try to organise per level (track) of action.
Then try to distinguish:
- “Long term early response”
(es. Options in 4.2 c, f,g,h) plus
Support or initiate forums of local organisations for ongoing dialogue and joint strategies to channel proposals for peaceful processes of conflict management and give them access to international decision making processes.
- “Short term early response”
(in already quite escalated violence, such as options in 4.2 b, d, and the following ones).
(a) Civilian peace services: rapidly deployable teams of experts can be a useful instrument in emerging crisis to support local peaceful actors. Cultural and gender differences should be a resource of such teams.
(b) Pools of specialists (possibly coordinated at UN or regional level, even if nationally provided): set up (or better develop where existing) rosters of several thousands (20.000 if at UN level?) specialists, rapidly deployable, having specialised skills for tasks needed in conflict prone areas to support local peaceful actors, but also minimal standards of conflict management skills.
(c) Make use of existing international documents and legal documents, such as the UN (and EU) Guidelines for the protection of Human Rights defenders.
(d) Recognise international protective presence (already implemented by several NGOs) as an important tool for short-term early response.
(e) Plus points presently under 5.2.1 c and d, 5.2.2 d, 5.1.1 g