Monday 7th of July the first two week block of the training programme ‘Governance and Rule of Law in Societies of Early Transition and Fragile and Conflict affected Areas’ started in The Hague. Participants working in different contexts – with experiences from Afghanistan to Yemen, Egypt, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria – participated in this programme that The Hague Academy for Local Governance and The Hague Institute for Global Justice developed and organised together.
Each day different experts were providing sessions, varying from ‘peacebuilding and local governance’ and ‘building public trust’ to ‘conflict sensitive programming’. Dion van den Berg’s session on ‘Role of local authorities in peace- and statebuilding was one of the most insightful sessions, according to our participants: ‘Dion’s session was relevant, and briljant. He was a very inspiring person to hear, and the experiences he shared were lessons applicable to much of our work. His colleague Simone was also very experienced and a delight to have in the session. It was great to have such experienced field practitioners to learn from.’ One of the other highlights was Irma Specht’s session on Gender and Peacebuilding. One of the participants especially liked ‘the way how the trainer looks at the gender lens from an objective, yet critical perspective which is normally missing in various gender perspectives.’ Another good session was the session of Hetty Burgman and Rob Sijsterman of Cordaid who provided a very insightful day about the promotion of dialogue in (post-) conflict settings and the Performance Based Financing approach. ‘Social dialogue is key to much of our work, and the examples given, provided valuable insights and lessons in the field.’ Besides gaining new knowledge, the participants did also work on assignments, group work and presentations during the interactive training sessions.
At the end of the two fruitful weeks, the participants made a Back Home Action Plan in which they formulated how they are going to apply things learned into practice. ‘Being a practitioner I see this as the most relevant part, because what matters at the end is how much we manage to apply what we learnt’ stated one of the participants. After they presented their plans, it was time for the closing ceremony and time to say goodbye to each other. The two weeks of learning and working together and exchanging experiences, flew by very fast. The participants returned home satisfied, and with a great dose of inspiration, insights and ideas.
Places for the second and third module of the curriculum are still available, so if you would like to join in one of these trainings, sign up now!
For more information see: https://cms.thehagueacademy.com/blog/2013/07/curriculum-good-governance-rule-of-law-in-fragile-states/
