Human Security
Promoting Military Education and Security Sector Reform
AfP’s Senior Fellow for Policy Lisa Schirch (left) meets with members of the military.
The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) program on human security works to achieve a people-centered security strategy, which is a more successful, cost-effective, and sustainable national security strategy than traditional approaches. The program opens channels of communication between the Pentagon and local civil society organizations (CSOs) working to build human security from the ground up through conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Among its activities:
AfP offers training at US military academies and to senior officers on local capacity, NGOs, CSOs, and civil-military guidelines and humanitarian space.
AfP facilitates dialogue between civil society and the military to foster greater understanding and recognition of the contributions of civil society, its need for independence and civil-military joint interests in broadly defined human security and civilian protection. AfP is currently developing a curriculum for security forces on how they interact with civil society and relevant peacebuilding skills and processes.
AfP publishes articles, chapters, and guidance documents to bring military perspectives on stabilization into dialogue with civil society approaches to development, peacebuilding and conflict transformation.
Like peacebuilding practitioners, women and men in the military see the complexities of conflict up close, and they often quickly recognize the value of peacebuilding approaches to addressing difficult policy problems overseas. As a result of years of outreach facilitating communication with civil society, military officials have shown strong interest in learning from the peacebuilding field. AfP staff have been invited to give training courses, lectures, and workshops at the US Army War College, National Defense University, the Pentagon, and even in locations such as Afghanistan.
In 2012, the 3P Human Security (formerly the 3D Security Initiative) moved from Eastern Mennonite University to become a program of AfP. Now former 3P Director Lisa Schirch directed AfP’s program on human security.
Civil-Military Human Security Curriculum
AfP’s Senior Fellow for Policy, Lisa Schirch, spearheaded a comprehensive, three-year project culminating in a first-ever handbook and online training curriculum, along with a compilation of case studies illustrating successful civil-military collaborations, and a policy brief outlining key guidelines for policymakers.
The handbook and curriculum represent a giant leap forward for our civil-military human security capability in the peacebuilding field—a wealth of information, now freely available to the community online—to better prepare civilians, military, and police for coordinating with each other for human security:
