CAPMATCH – New Tool in the Peace-building Process

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UNITED NATIONS, Sep 24 2012 (IPS) - While the theme of peace-building remains at the core of the United Nations mandate, the sharing of experiences and best practices between post-conflict States has now become more available on the web.

“Peace-building is a work in progress. It requires great flexibility and approaches tailored to a given situation,” said U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon in his remarks earlier this year.

“We are determined to do everything we can to seize the post-conflict moment, and help societies find a safer, more prosperous path,” he added.

Launched at the United Nations Headquarters in New York Friday, the CAPMATCH, a United Nations online platform, is designed to provide assistance to post-conflict countries and countries in transition, especially in terms of building and strengthening of national institutions, security sector, justice system, economic institutions and employment.

Given its transition and post-conflict experience as well as its intensified engagement in international peacekeeping missions, countries such as Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti or Timor-Leste along with many non-governmental organizations have already joined the project.

“It’s a very simple way to get experience that meet your needs,” said Sarah Cliffe, special adviser and assistant secretary-general of Civilian Capacities to the United Nations, adding that the project involves both government agencies and civil society and is based on the principle of equal partnership, which means that participant countries can both provide their expertise as well as request it.

“For instance, we have first participants in the system, such as Côte d’Ivoire and Timor-Leste, who do both,” she said.

In her statement, Cliffe underlined the need of strengthening the role of national institutions as an useful tool in creating trust between citizens and the State by delivering political inclusion and preventing a possible conflict from escalating.

Explaining the practical side of the CAPMATCH, Christopher Coleman, the director of Civilian Capacity Project, demonstrated the example of how “economic revitalization” can be achieved by reasonable sharing of knowledge and experience through the web-platform.

For instance, Afghanistan, Timor-Leste or Fiji are now taking advantage of Indonesian expertise in capacity building programs, especially in the areas of micro finance, promotion of small and medium size enterprises, and community infrastructure rehabilitation, whereby the Spanish government developed a systems engineering organization that collaborates with governments on developing technical plans for sustainable economic and social development, such as vocational centers targeting youth employment in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Asked what could be the role of the United Nations in examining and monitoring the processes occurring on the platform, Cliffe said; “We don’t expect the UN to be the bottleneck in those exchanges, ” as the CAPMATCH is mainly designed to provide a forum for exchange between government experts and civil society organizations.