Tag Archive for: humanitarian aid

Australia’s multilateralism à la carte is failing people in humanitarian contexts

Much has been written about the changing international order and the ‘crisis’ of multilateralism in recent months. The winds of change have been howling, indeed. International treaties and the multilateral system, with the United Nations at its centre, are being challenged like seldom before. The Covid-19 pandemic has been characterised by a severe lack of cooperation between major powers. And the Indo-Pacific is turning into the world’s main stage for geostrategic competition, as both autocratic and democratic nations increasingly flex their muscles.

Australia’s foreign policy is adapting to these realities, and rightly so. More attention is paid to promoting stability and growth in our region. Commitments to the rules-based order and key multilateral institutions have also been dialled up. In a landmark speech, Foreign Minister Marise Payne stressed that ‘the pandemic has brought into stark relief the major role of international institutions in addressing and coordinating a global response to a global problem across multiple lines of effort’. Funding was dished out accordingly, with strong contributions to the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility and key Asia–Pacific partner countries, among several steps to address the largest public health crisis in a century.

Australia clearly understands the importance of multilateral cooperation to tackle challenges that go beyond the capabilities of any one country. Yet, there is an elephant in the room. Why has Australia been largely absent from the multilateral response to Covid-19 in humanitarian crisis settings, most of which are beyond our region? Why is Australia stepping away from responding to protracted conflict and displacement in the world’s most fragile contexts, just as the pandemic triggers the return of famine and historic humanitarian need? How can Australia expect to promote stability in the Indo-Pacific when parts of the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa are on the verge of collapse?

The UN’s Covid-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan is a case in point. Over the past nine months, it has been the core multilateral instrument to address urgent health and socioeconomic needs in countries already facing a humanitarian or refugee crisis, such as Afghanistan, Lebanon, Mali, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. To date, the plan has delivered thousands of hand-washing facilities in crowded refugee camps, provided emergency support to survivors of gender-based violence, and provided special care for children at risk. The appeal requested A$13 billion for 2020 (small change compared with the A$15 trillion that wealthy countries have spent on domestic stimulus programs) but as of 14 December, it was 60 per cent unfunded.

Australia has failed to mount an adequate response, with a meagre contribution of A$29.7 million (0.6 per cent of the fund’s total budget). This is roughly the same as the government of Chad’s contribution, and compares poorly to strategic partners like the UK, Germany, Japan and the US that recognise the importance of strong humanitarian engagement in conflict settings. Add to this Australia’s declining contributions to the World Food Programme, whose critical role in fighting hunger in conflict settings was recently acknowledged with a Nobel Peace Prize. Nor is this underwhelming contribution balanced by a robust humanitarian aid budget; Australia’s is small compared with those of similar-sized economies like Canada and the Netherlands.

Of course, this reflects Australia’s strategic realignment, with the government’s new aid strategy noting that ‘while this pandemic is global, our interests, influence and capabilities are concentrated in our immediate neighbourhood’. Aid is seen as an extension to diplomacy and a tool to promote Australia’s economic and security interests in the Asia–Pacific region.

While the region is indeed struggling economically and socially, and additional support is warranted, it is short-sighted to reduce Australia’s engagement in the world’s crisis hotspots. Covid-19 is wreaking havoc in conflict-affected countries outside the Indo-Pacific, with levels of hunger, poverty, stress and tension all spiralling. Even before the pandemic, protracted humanitarian crises like the ones in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan left millions of children and youth in limbo, with far-reaching implications for their future opportunities. Infections are still rising unchecked, local economies have collapsed, and the spectre of famine looms in South Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria and the West African Sahel region, all while violent conflict continues unabated. State structures in these environments lack the capacity or will to provide basic services to people uprooted from their homes; refugees in particular rely on a strong multilateral response to fill the gaps.

A ‘humanitarian step-up’ in Africa and the Middle East would be entirely in Australia’s national interest. It would save the lives and livelihoods of millions, prevent the international crisis from worsening and build on past development investments in these regions. Tackling the outbreak in the world’s most fragile contexts is also a prerequisite to ending the pandemic in the Indo-Pacific, both from a health and socio-political perspective. We know, for example, that economic collapse and life dissatisfaction can lead people to be more receptive to extremist ideologies; the growing marginalisation of children and youth in humanitarian settings may therefore have a direct bearing on future peace and security in Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh. For the sake of our own prosperity and security, we should take note that millions of displaced people are at risk of turning into a permanent underclass, vulnerable to exploitation. Unless more is done now, we will deal with the expensive spillover effects for many years to come.

In the contest for Australian resources, strategic humanitarian assistance to conflict-affected populations outside the Indo-Pacific needs to gain much higher priority. A first step would be to adopt a A$150 million aid package, before the pandemic’s first anniversary, to address soaring hardship in protracted crises outside the Indo-Pacific, with a specific focus on averting famine and getting displaced children back into a learning environment. Further, given that more than half of the world’s refugees are children, it would be sensible to invest half of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s emergency assistance in the wellbeing of children caught up in protracted crises, including their nutrition, mental health and protection from violence. We cannot risk losing a generation of children to conflict and Covid-19.

Not least, the changing nature and complexity of crises also demands a new approach. Australia should use its development programs to focus more on building resilience and preventing conflict in the world’s most fragile contexts, to help communities better face future shocks and address their own needs.

Former UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld famously said the UN ‘was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell’. Australia is well placed to adapt to significant shifts in the regional balance of power while also advancing multilateral humanitarian goals and means. It is time to step up again and help fulfill Hammarskjöld’s promise in the world’s major humanitarian theatres.

Protecting humanitarian workers from violence a continuing challenge for the UN

The recent article by fellow Australian Gordon Weiss on the UN and Australia’s place in it brought to mind the extreme dangers often faced by both national and international humanitarian relief workers with the UN, the Red Cross movement (the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) and non-governmental organisations.

In my own UN experience over 15 years in northern Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Israel/Palestine and the UN Mine Action Service, I have witnessed the dangers to such workers from wars, armed conflicts, terrorism, assassinations and natural disasters. The continued absence over the past several decades or more of world war or anything approaching it has been offset by a plethora of both state and non-state actors using violence to achieve their objectives.

A worrying development over that time has been the marked increase in targeting of UN and associated humanitarian relief personnel in crisis countries and regions. In one sad instance, two UNICEF workers who inadvertently drove into an ambush between known rebel groups in what was then southern Sudan were executed by the side of the road. The incriminating orders were captured at base by the UN on two-way radio.

Staff of the International Committee of the Red Cross have suffered horrendous casualties in many theatres of conflict. Much-acclaimed Afghan deminers working in Afghanistan for national NGOs in landmine-clearance operations and supported by the UN suffer fatalities not just from the mines they locate and destroy, but also from the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

In Sudan, as the country battled through a decades-long civil war that saw the eventual creation (in 2011) of a new state of South Sudan, we as UN coordinators were haunted by the epidemic of killings, kidnappings, general mayhem and attrition rates not only within civilian communities, but also directed at UN and NGO staff there trying to help.

Extreme violence towards UN personnel has been occurring since the very beginnings of the UN in the mid-1940s, even at the most senior levels. In 1948, the secretary-general’s special envoy to newly created Israel, UN Under-Secretary-General Count Folke Bernadotte from Sweden, was assassinated on a busy Jerusalem street.

In 1961, the UN secretary general himself, Dag Hammarskjold, also of Sweden, died in a plane crash in southern Africa when he was centrally involved in trying to stop the conflict in the Congo. Rumours persist to this day of foul play in the crash itself.

In 2003, yet another UN under-secretary-general and leader of a humanitarian mission to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Merlo, died in the rubble of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad along with 22 other UN personnel (including Rani, my Filipino office manager from an earlier time in Iraqi Kurdistan), blown up by terrorists.

The great majority of UN and associated humanitarian workers are nationals of the countries receiving humanitarian relief assistance. They bear the brunt of the endemic violence visited upon such workers, most times in the course of seeking to assist host populations suffering from one or more of a range of adverse events.

Such events typically include extreme weather and climate change, sickness and pandemics, and internal armed conflict. In the small country of Yemen in the Gulf region of the Middle East, virtually all of these factors are at play: more than half of its 25 million population are categorised by the UN as being at extreme risk. It is emblematic that the UN, together with NGOs and Red Cross organisations, are there, doing their best with limited resources to provide relief to communities under severe stress.

A smaller cohort of humanitarian relief workers are internationals from all corners of the globe, bringing to bear impartiality and neutrality in situations of violent conflict, as well as skills in the provision of relief assistance—hygiene and medicine, water and sanitation, food and agriculture.

Australians have been and are well represented in all of these key sectors, and in my own time in the UN I encountered plenty of young—and not so young—fellow countrymen and women, not only with the UN but also with the Red Cross and NGO movements. Some of them were and are never far away from the ever-present threat of external violence.

In Burundi, an Australian UN security officer pulled a concealed weapon to shoot an insurgent who had begun to murder a line-up of UN international staff and had already killed two. In Erbil in northern Iraq, a young New Zealand demining professional was assassinated on the eve of Anzac Day. In Gaza, Palestine, an Australian female officer working for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees) crawled into an UNRWA warehouse on fire from an air strike, to rescue much-needed food distribution vehicles from a conflagration which gutted the warehouse.

Australian ex-military veterans, many with specialist skills, are well represented and well thought of in the UN-coordinated work dealing with the scourge of landmines and unexploded ordnance. There have inevitably been many fatalities in this particularly dangerous area of humanitarian work, including of Australians.

The protection of humanitarian assistance personnel remains an ongoing and critical challenge for the UN. A web of international human rights and humanitarian law provides umbrella protection, and host governments have clear responsibilities to protect. This is not enough, and so the UN secretariat includes in its structure a department of safety and security whose role is to provide optimum protection for staff and dependents, and the safest possible conduct of humanitarian relief operations.

New wars, new weapons—new challenges for the Red Cross

Seventy years after the signing of the Geneva Conventions, geopolitics has brought humankind to the brink of another arms race with new weapons and non-human combatants, a senior Red Cross official has warned.

Dr Hugo Slim, head of policy for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the conventions placed deep value on restraint and set important limits on the violence that continued to mark our species.

States must work together to protect the victims of wars and natural disasters, Slim said in a lecture co-hosted by the ICRC and the Australian National University’s Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs.

‘We need humanitarian multilateralism urgently today as geopolitics leans towards great-power contest and competition once again and as new technology sees us on the cusp of a paradigm shift in new weapons and non-human combatants.’

Slim said warriors and politicians must distinguish between combatants and civilians; protect civilians, civilian objects and the environment; attack or defend in proportion to the threat using reasonable force that does not impose unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury; provide or allow impartial relief to the wounded, sick, civilians and detainees; and treat all people in their nations’ care humanely.

Developments in warfare demanded new Red Cross practices, and political changes demanded a shift in its diplomatic practice. Decolonisation and liberation had seen more than 100 new states emerge. Some were now major powers and many were middle powers or small states with full-spectrum foreign policy perspectives and significant diplomatic capacity.

It was important for the ICRC to know them all, and its diplomatic expansion was a response to the increasing significance of Asian, Pacific and African states and their potential to be important partners in dealing with specific conflicts, or in global policy development.

States often had distinct and nuanced views on global issues which the ICRC needed to know and understand.

Slim said a new wave of conservatism was driving a rise of so-called ‘illiberal democracies’ and authoritarian governments. That required the ICRC to have a deep understanding of conservative values and to appreciate where conservative and nationalist ethics found common ground with humanitarian values and the Geneva Conventions.

‘The ICRC always needs to develop a meaningful humanitarian dialogue with new political movements of all kinds as they arise and engage in armed conflict. Our sustained dialogue with radically conservative Islamist and Buddhist politics in recent years is an example.’

Slim said the ICRC had to listen to conservative and nationalist political opinion in the same way it engaged with liberal democracy in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The shift from cooperation to competition among the world’s great powers, and the long-range risk of global conflict, required the ICRC to have especially close relations with these powers, their political and military establishments, and their humanitarian auxiliaries such as the Red Cross and civil defence and emergency management departments.

Another major change was the rise in the ‘coalition of warfare’, with diverse and complicated partnered operations between allied states and multiple armed groups, as a feature of war in the Middle East, North and West Africa, and parts of Asia.

Prioritising joint military policy, planning, training and equipping could ensure that all parts of a coalition respected international humanitarian law in equal measure.

‘Here we need Australian support whenever your military forces are part of a coalition’, Slim said.

The ICRC was especially concerned about the use of explosives with a wide impact in urban areas, and persistent attacks against healthcare facilities, staff and patients. It was working with states and armed groups to reduce these violations.

‘On both these humanitarian challenges … we need Australian humanitarian influence close to the ground whenever possible.’

Weapons shaped by new levels of digitalisation, autonomy, robotics and artificial intelligence were the hardest humanitarian challenge to predict because so much of their technology was unprecedented and speculative, Slim said.

‘We’re dramatically improving our understanding of new technology and are also thinking hard with others about the ethical issues arising in the use of new weapons—key questions of human control and the new “baked-in” risks and opportunities of high-tech weapons and AI.’

Any new weapon must still be designed with the ability to comply with international humanitarian law.

But, Slim asked, would humans always retain command and control of such weapons?

‘Will AI technology remain a weapon in the strict sense or become a deep-learning non-human combatant with ethical expertise and responsibility of its own?’

Weapons technology was moving extremely fast but weapons diplomacy was moving extremely slowly. ‘Alarmingly, but not surprisingly, the hot new arms race is accompanied by a negotiations freeze as several states want to get ahead before negotiating.’

Now, wars can last for decades with violence ebbing and flowing across a country, damaging health facilities, water and wastewater systems, schools and businesses, and leaving millions living in run-down areas. The ICRC has had to develop a combination of urgent relief and much longer term humanitarian investments.

‘In one place we need to truck in clean water and food. In another place, we need to repair electricity substations and high-voltage power lines, or maintain massive water-purification plants and miles of complicated urban water pipes. We are repairing schools, upgrading prisons and hospitals, and paying for health staff and water authority engineers.’

The World Bank and others were now funding this work in areas where people risked being ‘left behind’.

Millions of people in places like Mali, Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar and the Philippines lived the ‘double vulnerability’ of conflict and climate shocks. ‘We cannot just give people things that restore their former lives. We have to work with them to support their efforts at climate mitigation and climate adaptation.’

Slim said humanitarian assistance in armed conflict was learning fast from work in disaster risk reduction, and here the Australian Red Cross and many Asian states were experts.

Another big change was in the way assistance was provided. Western humanitarian action had deeply colonial traits from when it followed imperial power and had been dominated by the idea that ‘we help you’, Slim said.

Now people affected by conflict wanted to take the lead in the humanitarian response and that was an approach championed by the Australian Red Cross.

Finally, Slim said, it was vital to embed humanity in the hearts and minds of warriors and politicians. The Geneva Conventions recognised a state’s right to win in war. The principle of ‘military necessity’ ran alongside the principle of humanity to guarantee that victory had value alongside compassion.

Australia had a good record of holding both values in recent military engagements, and much of that success turned on the determined cultivation of operational virtues and ethical culture in its armed forces.

Virtue and character were the best generators of judgement, Slim said, and humanity needed to be imbibed and believed as a virtue in war.

This battlefield virtue was painful in that it must be based in a deep double conviction that humanity was right and that winning was right, and the knowledge that those beliefs would not completely overlap.

‘Sometimes it will be infuriating that you could not strike a dangerous enemy because too many civilians would have been hurt in the process’, Slim said. ‘Sometimes it’s painful that you had to strike and many civilians were hurt in the process.’

Politicians and military personnel were asked to make difficult decisions and military culture must be shaped to develop the virtue of humanity as part of warfighting, he said.

‘In this, Australian military training and reflection is some of the best in the world and has informed and improved the ICRC’s own understanding of how to develop the virtue of humanity in military forces.’

Should Australia use blockchain in delivering humanitarian aid?

Australia, like many countries, provides overseas humanitarian assistance in times of humanitarian crises. As part of DFAT’s humanitarian strategy, Australia transfers money to Australian non-governmental organisations, international humanitarian agencies and UN agencies, which then provide supplies and relief to those affected.

Receiving assistance in emergencies and crises is a critical component of security for people in highly vulnerable situations. They often need to receive the aid quickly. At the same time, donors want their aid to be put to the best use and to reach as many people as possible.

Unfortunately—and often despite the best efforts of everyone involved—current aid delivery processes are full of inefficiencies and opportunities for fraud. Humanitarian aid agencies are criticised for shortcomings in responding to disasters, including uncoordinated and duplicated efforts on the ground and for not being able to meet the needs of every individual.

A 2016 report by the UN High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing raised concerns about the lack of transparency in UN aid agencies and the need both to improve their delivery and to address their financing shortages.

Additionally, the 2017 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report reveals that there has been a global slowdown in international humanitarian assistance due to changing priorities and availability of funds. The report also states that despite an increase in the amount of funding UN-coordinated appeals received in 2016 (US$12.4 billion compared to US$11 billion in 2015), UN agencies still face a 40% shortfall, or US$8.2 billion, in requirements. Therefore, it is clear that we need to make the best use of the humanitarian funds that are available.

This is where blockchain could make a contribution.

Blockchain is a technology that facilitates digital transactions and permanently stores a copy of each record at multiple locations. This distributed aspect of the technology is one of its main attractions. Not only does it make data much more secure, but it also creates an unchangeable record of each transaction’s source and destination. There remain questions around blockchain’s security, as well as issues of digital identity, how the technology can be scaled and in which industries it could be most effectively applied.

Despite being an emerging technology, governments and international organisations alike are starting to realise its potential.

The UN is beginning to seek alternative ways to deliver aid in humanitarian contexts using blockchain. For example, one year ago the UN piloted its first blockchain program. The World Food Programme’s (WFP) Building Blocks program used blockchain to provide cash-based assistance to Syrian refugees. Monetary allowances were transferred to local suppliers near refugee camps using the ethereum blockchain. Refugees could go directly to those suppliers to redeem their allowances.

Biometric identification via an iris scan gave each refugee a unique identifier to access. With these digital cash allowances, some 10,000 Syrian refugees could buy supplies directly from a supplier rather than going through the traditional means of receiving in-person vouchers or food aid from the WFP itself.

So what have we learned? The results of the pilot project significantly enhanced the efficiency of aid delivery. According to Hila Cohen, WFP’s Innovation Accelerator, 200,000 transactions were processed without any glitches during the pilot program. The electronic transfers reduced WFP’s costs by 98%, essentially by cutting out the need to process money through a bank and to set up a bank account for each individual refugee. In essence, the blockchain technology streamlined the money transfers and ensured that the allowances went directly to refugees.

So why should this be of interest to Australia?

The Australian government has already demonstrated that it’s open to investing in blockchain. It’s also exploring the possibilities of blockchain technology through the CSIRO Data61 initiative.

At the end of 2017, DFAT published its International Cyber Engagement Strategy. The strategy includes a chapter on development technology, focusing on three key areas:

  1. Improving connectivity and access to the internet across the Indo-Pacific
  2. Encouraging the use of resilient, development-enabling technologies
  3. Supporting entrepreneurship, digital skills and integration into the global marketplace.

The section on development-enabling technologies focuses on improving financial inclusion, particularly for people in rural and remote areas. It aims to use online and mobile banking technologies to connect the 400 million unbanked people in Southeast Asia to the formal financial sector.

It also focuses on the digital delivery of services, highlighting the importance of digital technologies to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government services.

Given these objectives, Australia could also extend this use of innovative technologies to vulnerable populations in humanitarian crises. The WFP example shows that this is possible with available technology. Blockchain’s distributed ledger network makes it a resilient technology, which fits with the Australian aid program’s mandate to build resilience into its humanitarian assistance and its overseas aid. Between July 2015 and June 2016, Australia’s emergency assistance totalled more than $231.3 million in response to more than 20 crises, including in Myanmar, Syria, Iraq, Africa, Afghanistan and the Pacific.

And by making the process of delivering aid more efficient, blockchain could help Australia stretch its aid budget further.

There is an emerging awareness in the region of blockchain’s applications in the financial sector, such as Japan’s microfinance program in Myanmar. Cambodia hosted the 2018 ASEAN Blockchain Summit in March, launching ASEAN’s very first blockchain payment and cryptocurrency, Entapay.

Similarly, Australia should start thinking about the potential of blockchain technology in humanitarian aid and work with its humanitarian partner organisations to show what is possible when technology and aid intersect.

Building civic institutions in liberated Syria

Police in Aleppo

Where the al-Assad regime no longer exercises control in Syria, communities are grappling with the challenges of self-governance in an unstable political and military environment. Despite the unimpeded power of armed groups, ongoing regime bombardment and a general public distrust in government institutions stemming from decades of repression under the Ba’ath, progress has been made in certain communities in establishing civic institutions that offer a level of human security and stability to the Syrians that remain.

As the conflict enters its fifth year, it is overdue for external governments and donors to begin or increase financial or skills-based support to these newly formed police, judicial and council bodies. These bodies offer a possible blueprint for the future of the revolution and they could act as a bulwark against further violence should the regime fall. As multiple external actors jostle for influence inside Syria, aiding indigenous, community-driven stabilisation and development initiatives in liberated Syria offers an effective and nuanced way for governments, such as Australia, to provide security benefits that stretch far beyond Syria’s own borders.

Policing

Some Syrian communities have functioning local police, predominantly staffed by defected regime members and/or locals. Simple organised and regular patrols by the local police can increase security and reduce crime levels, particularly theft and looting.

In some communities such as Kafr Nobel, police and armed groups work in tandem to provide security. The main armed group operating in that area protects the community from external dangers by setting checkpoints on the outskirts of the town. This allows the local police force to implement some semblance of law and order within the town. Unfortunately, the presence of armed groups in and around a specific location also gives the regime a pretext for bombardment.

In other communities, newly established local police are often hampered in their abilities by a deeply ingrained lack of trust in the institution. Civilian awareness-raising campaigns and community dialogues are something external government can facilitate to inform the community of the role that a local or national police body should and will play in a new Syrian society.

Judiciary

Despite the ongoing violence and hardship, some towns such as Darat Izza in northern Aleppo province have managed to establish relatively effective judicial bodies, which operate together with the police to provide some stability. However, many judges are inexperienced in dealing with certain crimes, presumably once handled by Assad’s police state. These judges now require legal training to competently handle complex criminal cases such as murder and manslaughter in a legitimate and professional way. Additionally, other courts, such as those established in the image of armed group Jabhat al-Nusra like the Aleppo Sharia Court, may have the ways and means to enforce their rulings, but most courts have little to no ability to implement the law.

Another issue is that in order for the law to be effective, communities need to establish and develop one main justice provider (and an associated legal hierarchy) as well as decide on one consistent body of law. Sometimes if people are unsatisfied with the ruling of the court, they bring the matter before the armed brigade or local elders to receive a different result.  This kind of arbitrariness is antithetical to the rule of law and will potentially require a multipronged legal education and de-militarisation campaign to rectify.

Civilian governing bodies

Local councils or some sort of civilian governing body complement the police and the judiciary by providing necessary services to civilians with the meager funds and support they receive from abroad or from the opposition government. Such bodies were in existence from the earliest days of the uprising as informal networks of solidarity that formed to support the peaceful protests by way of aid distribution or supplying medical care. In some communities the populace elects the council members, in others they are appointed by notable families. Councils take the bulk of the responsibility for providing important civil services and public works such as clearing roads, garbage collection and rebuilding schools that make life for Syrians bearable. However, generally councils can only act to provide tangible relief to civilians in-line with the amount of funding and support they receive, which is generally grossly inadequate.

Human security and development

While religious groups or political strongmen may provide a level of security to their constituents, the catalyst for many of the Arab uprisings, including Syria’s, was the impotency felt by the populace to shape their own destiny. While fraught with political complexity, if governments such as Australia’s are keen to ward off future instability spawned by the Syrian conflict, investing in community-level structures now, either financially or alternatively through expertise, could have lasting benefits for security both within Syria and beyond. Additionally, supporting increased oversight of civic institutions is also what Syrians began asking for five long years ago.

Australia has long played a role in training and advising law enforcement bodies in its immediate region and in theatres such as Afghanistan. It has real experience working in conflict areas that it could put to good use in Syria. As Australia’s financial aid to Syria dwindles, it is well placed to augment international efforts already underway with experienced advisors and mentors that could be used to support local Syrian institutions provide law enforcement, justice and governance.