The U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute
(PKSOI) facilitated the annual Peace and Stability Operations
Training and Education Workshop (PSOTEW) to promote
a comprehensive approach to Peace and Stability Operations
through training and education. The PSOTEW brings together
trainers, educators, and practitioners from the U.S. and international governmental/non-governmental organizations, military
and civilian peace and stability training centers, and academic
institutions to share current challenges and best practices toward improving civilian and military teaming efforts in support
of Peace and Stability Operations. The goal of the workshop
series is to produce material that can be used to train and educate the joint force and the community of interest on Peace and
Stability Operations, by creating or enhancing existing organizational doctrine, training and exercises, based on the latest
lessons learned and innovative industry trends.
Background
The PSOTEW workshop, which began eight years ago, focuses
on providing a forum for educators, trainers, and practitioners
to share best practices and work through identified challenges,
while capitalizing on real world operations to build community relationships, share tools and methodologies, and increase
awareness among stakeholders. The workshop is accomplished
through senior leader forums and panels with follow-on workgroups led by subject matter experts, collaborating to identify
potential solutions to identified peace and stability training and
education challenges. The workgroups present the identified
solutions to senior leadership within the community of interest
in order to garner support in addressing training and education
requirements to operate in complex and ever changing operational environments.
alent leaders from both the government and non-government
instituions, followed by final remarks from the keynote speaker.
This year’s keynote speaker was General(Retired) Carter F.
Ham, former Commander, U.S. Africa Command and Chair,
National Committee on Future U.S. Army. General (Retired)
Ham challenged workshop attendees to think about, “What
role does peace and stability operations play or should play in
our overarching National Security Policy and the objectives we
want to achieve.” The keynote paved the way for working groups
to roll up their sleeves and make key recommendations to senior
leaders concerning the need for a comprehensive approach to
peacekeeping and stability operations training and education.
Working group composition is based p rimarily on attendee interest; however, the groups are structured with the aim to have
diverse backgrounds across each group. A facilitator is assigned
to each working group as the group addresses a specific challenge currently facing the community of interest. There were
seven workgroups addressing the following issues:
WG 1: Developing a training strategy for Foreign Humanitarian Assistance (FHA) was sponsored by PKSOI. The purpose
of the WG was to analyze operations United Assistance (Ebola
Support) and Haiti Earthquake relief operations in order to
identify lessons learned and gaps in FHA operations. The group
outlined procedures to integrate lessons learned in planning,
training and education models. The deliverable was an FHA
training strategy outline focused on both disaster preparedness
and disaster response.
WG 2: Preparing Senior Leaders to Succeed in UN Peace
Operations was sponsored by the International Association of
the Peace Training Center (IAPTC). Focusing on the United
Nations (UN) High Level Independent Panel Report, the UN
Peacebuilding Architecture, 2015 Presidential Memorandum,
PSOTEW Objectives
US Support to UN Peace Operations, and the US Presidential
Summit on Peacekeeping, there is political impetus to improve
The discussions across the six work groups focused on “IdentiUN Peace Operations. Educating leaders is identified as a key
fying and Implementing Peace and Stabilization Training and
enabler. The WG presented the current state of education not
Education” as the overall theme for the workshop. The objeconly from a UN education perspective, but also from a US pertive for the Workshop focuses on accomplishing the following: spective on educating its own senior leaders. The deliverables
• Providing a forum that addresses the equities of the commu from the working group are:
nity of practice and its activities;
• Identify the key competencies for a senior leader in the areas
• Fostering collaboration between the joint professional
of knowledge, skills, and attributes
military education and academic communities;
• Identify the resources available or required to develop and
• Informing and supporting senior leaders, to monitor prog
deliver identified training needs
ress, and to provide feedback on future recommendations.
• Identify the optimal delivery methods
• Identify a community of practice to advance such education
Concept
The workshop is a three day event, beginning with a plenary session in the morning consisting of flag officers and civilian-equiv-
WG 3: Developing a Methodology for Assessing and Countering Transnational Organized Crime was sponsored by PKSOI.
The lack of an integrated analytic approach for differentiating
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