Complex Emergency Response and Transition Initiative

In Collaboration with The Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS

 

Project on

TRAINING FOR CRISIS PREVENTION AND MANAGEMENT

Project Manager

Rodger Yeager, Ph.D.

Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS

Behavioral Scientist

Donna Ruscavage, M.S.W.

Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine

 

April 19, 2000

 

 

In the post-Cold War era, the international community is being challenged to develop new ways to address low-intensity conflicts, internal emergencies, massive displacement of populations and complex humanitarian crises.  The profile of many nations is undergoing change due to civil war, secession of provinces, and border disputes.  Peacekeeping forces and humanitarian relief missions are being deployed to address these crises along with the already complex task of defusing smoldering internal conflict and erupting violence.  One long-term goal in this new era, in which “preventive diplomacy” has not yet come of age, is a reduction in full-scale humanitarian emergencies and an effective mitigation of their impact when and where they do occur.  

Central to this effort is the training of military and police forces, peace and election observers, and humanitarian aid workers to deal with a daunting palette of unexpected crisis events and to maintain their effectiveness over time.  This, in turn, calls for training that is tailored to individual crisis circumstances and is socially and culturally appropriate to the personnel involved.  At the outset of the twenty-first century, HIV/AIDS prevention and control forms a key subject of such training.

The Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS (CMA) has developed and field-tested a five-module teaching curriculum on “HIV Prevention and Behavior Change in Military Populations.”  This curriculum is available in a version that specifically addresses the training needs of UN peacekeeping forces.  It is fully supported by Instructors’ Notes, so that it is at once both a training-of-trainers package and training course that is readily adaptable to a wide range of settings.  It is readily cut to a shorter version, or it can be spread over longer periods, and includes approaches to reinforcing “booster” sessions. 

A second version of this curriculum is geared to generic military and police forces “at home.”  Like the peacekeepers’ version, this edition addresses the structural nature of the risk environment into which military and police personnel enter with their families.

A sixth training module that will fit into both versions of the Curriculum is under development.  It addresses the circumstances of Women in Crisis Settings.  In the context of HIV/AIDS prevention, this module emphasizes the special risks of women and children, their vulnerability in crisis and civil disruption, their reproductive health needs, and their need for protection against bodily, sexual and psychological violence.  The sixth module focuses on women and children in crisis settings in order to increase the uniformed services’ awareness of and sensitivity to their special needs in these highly dangerous circumstances.

 

TRAINING MODULE 7: THE CRISIS PREVENTION AND MANAGEMENT PROJECT

The Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS will now undertake the development and preliminary field testing of a seventh teaching module, complementary to the modules already in hand.  This new module will be designed to develop skills in Crisis Assessment, Crisis Prevention, Early Warning Systems and the Management of Interventions in the context of Crisis Prevention and Response.  It will recognize that dealing creatively with health and social issues, such as the risks of STD and HIV transmission and the sexual violence so often seen in humanitarian emergencies, offers a bridge to peace and conflict resolution.

THE TARGET “SUBJECT” AUDIENCE OF TRAINEES in Crisis Prevention and Response will consist of selected members of  the uniformed services, primarily senior commanding officers and training officers, drawn from military, paramilitary, peacekeeping and internal security forces as well police forces and demobilizing military personnel.

SECONDARY “OBJECT” BENEFICIARIES OF THE TRAINING, and the behavior change that it engenders, will overlap somewhat with those identified as beneficiaries of Module 6.  These will be the especially vulnerable populations in pre-crisis, crisis, and immediate post-crisis situations – including  

1.       refugee and internally displaced populations;

2.       women, both civilians and fighters;

3.       children and adolescents, including "child soldiers”; and

4.       other groups and organizations that are particularly dangerous and/or vulnerable in pre-crisis, crisis, and immediate post-crisis situations, e.g., recently demobilized fighters, permanent humanitarian personnel (local clergy, development workers, etc.) emergency relief workers, and endangered groups within or routinely in contact with the contending forces themselves (e.g., women and children fighters, local vendors, and camp followers).

THE PEDAGOGICAL APPROACH to be adopted in Module 7 will follow the lead of earlier modules, using interactive dialogue and exercises, role-playing, “homework,” and the liberal use of visuals and graphics.  Features of this new module will include:

Ø       Understanding the culture of violence that underlies crises, and offering openings that can facilitate the emergence of a peace culture for the populations involved, including the military, police and civilian community.

Ø       Skills-development for rapid situation assessment and needs-identification that are crucial for early response, management of interventions and the mitigation of impact.

Ø       An emphasis on behavioral issues that underlie the structural nature of the risk environment.

Ø       The management of risk reduction and preventing the progression of any particular crisis through the use of peer educators for all of the population groups caught up in any complex emergency.

 

FIELD-TESTING will be conducted according to the same rationale and procedures that have guided testing procedures for Modules 1-5 and will also guide the field-testing of Module 6.  Of the two types of field test that are available (PROCESS testing and OUTCOME testing), process testing is financially and logistically most feasible for these training modules.  Process testing means subjecting the completed module to a series of in situ training situations.  This approach has already been used for Modules 1-5, involving training sessions organized in Turin (Italy), Rockville (Maryland, USA), Pretoria (South Africa), and Sessvollmoen (Norway).  This rich experience of testing has permitted useful adjustments to be made to the modules.  Testing has also demonstrated the ability of the modules to be “fine-tuned” on each occasion for comprehension and improved expectation of behavioral change, especially when follow-up “booster” training is administered at periodic intervals. 

Preliminary testing of Module 7 will be accomplished, within the budget and timeline that we have specified, from 1-30 September 2000.  Considering the logistical and financial constraints that affect the development of Module 7, it is impossible to consider outcome testing.  To pursue outcome testing, a highly formalized application of the module would be required, complete with experimental and control groups and a detailed follow-up of individual trainees and control-group members at specified time intervals into the future.  This follow-up would require (a) self-reported data, (b) accurate data on behavior change (measured, e.g., through cognitive testing and in condom usage) and on infection patterns within both subject and object populations.  This procedure is virtually impossible in Africa, especially under pre-crisis, crisis, and immediate post-crisis circumstances. 

In Africa and, by definition, in crisis settings, any attempt to reach subject populations directly will fail - inter alia, because of the circumstances that make them subject populations.  On the other hand, we can anticipate a result of successful training that goes beyond simply returning to a developmental status quo in the post-crisis period - measured in stable to declining HIV incidence and prevalence rates, fewer AIDS orphans, and longer life-expectancies, all achieved under very difficult conditions.

The overarching goal of the module will remain true to the objectives of the overall teaching curriculum, to reduce risk of STD/HIV/AIDS infections as a matter of enlightened self-interest to subject populations, and of their responsibility to protect object populations with whatever tools can be mustered (e.g., appeals to fighters based on their own self-protection and, through transference, reference to object populations as including people like their own loved ones).  Possibilities will also be raised of peer-educational alternatives for active and demobilized military and paramilitary personnel.

THE PROGRAMME OF ACTION will consist of several phases, to be undertaken and supervised by the Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS.  These phases will include:  

1.       Use of consultant and CMA staff time to develop the new module on Crisis Prevention and Management.

2.       Under the provisions of the preceding sections, field-testing this module in the context of training-of-trainers.  The CMA will involve one of its three African networks (probably Anglophone West Africa) in the scope of this initial testing protocol, with the possibility of its eventual extension to other CMA African and non-African networks (see Appendix II).

3.       Contributing consultant and CMA staff expert services in the further evolution of the approach taken, and in the actual leading of training-of-trainer exercises using this and the other modules.

4.       Final editing, printing, translating and distributing the module.

5.       Further collaboration in policy analysis and program development as the comparative advantages of the CMA and CERTI further emerge in this effort.

 

OVERALL OBJECTIVES FOR THE TRAINING MODULE AND THE FULL CURRICULUM

1.             To establish HIV/STD infections as long-term threats to development and to national and international peace and security, that may help to precipitate, exacerbate, and prolong short-term crises, and to render more difficult the transition from crisis to post-crisis situations.

2.             To set as an ultimate goal not merely a return to pre-crisis rates of HIV/STD incidence and prevalence, rather the achievement of incidence and prevalence rates that are progressively lower in the post-crisis period.

3.             To effect HIV/STD-related behavior change within the uniformed services, including national armed forces, international peacekeeping contingents, national and international police forces, and recently demobilized military and police personnel.

4.                   To reduce the risk of HIV/STD infection to members of national and international military, peacekeeping, and police services, and, through them, to populations that are especially vulnerable to STDs and HIV.  These populations include: (1) refugees and internally displaced men, women, and children; (2) uniformed women (3) civilian women; (4) children and adolescents; (5) other specific groups that are particularly vulnerable under pre-crisis conditions of civil unrest, during periods of armed conflict, and in immediate post-conflict situations, e.g., “child soldiers,” humanitarian and relief workers, and women and children who are drawn into prostitution during these complex humanitarian emergencies.

5.             To accomplish these goals using a formative evaluation process to develop, field test, and refine a training module that builds upon six existing training modules for the uniformed services which cover the following topics:

a.       Defining HIV and its Impact on the Military

b.       HIV Prevention

c.        Substance Abuse, HIV and STDs

d.       HIV Risk Assessment and Prevention Strategies

e.       Review of HIV Prevention and Behavior Change Issues

f.         Women in Crisis

6.                   Through the training module, to encourage active-duty and demobilized uniformed-services personnel to serve as peer educators of their comrades and vulnerable civilian populations, motivated by their sense of duty to preserve and protect civilian society, by their concerns for their own families and communities, and by their own enlightened self-interest.

7.                   In pre-crisis situations of poverty, hunger, ill-health, and increasing social unrest, to encourage active-duty and demobilized uniformed-services personnel to serve as “early-warning” sentinels of local increases in public-health problems and other indicators of socio-economic and political breakdown; i.e., to serve as the first line of crisis prevention and response through communication linkages made possible by national chains of command and by international civil-military networks of information exchange and resource sharing.*

 

 

 

*For example, the three African sub-regional networks of the Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS, for Anglophone West Africa (5 countries), Eastern and Southern Africa (15 countries), and Francophone Africa (20 countries).

 

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES FOR TRAINING MODULE PARTICIPANTS

1.                   To provide basic information on how HIV is transmitted, how it affects the human immune system, and about AIDS.

2.                   To define the particular threat of HIV/AIDS in pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis situations, both to peacekeepers and other uniformed-service personnel, and to disrupted and vulnerable local populations with which they come in contact.

3.                   To increase participants’ awareness of their duty to protect themselves and vulnerable civilian populations not only from immediate physical harm, but also against the hidden threat of HIV.

4.                   To increase participant awareness of the efficacy of using male and female condoms.

5.                   To increase participant knowledge and skill in the use of male and female condoms.

6.                   To increase participant knowledge of the negative effects that alcohol and other drugs can have on personal decision-making, and how these substances can increase the likelihood of involvement in risky behaviors for STD/HIV transmission.

7.                   To review guidelines for professional conduct by national military, international peacekeeping, and police personnel, and their implications for STD/HIV prevention – under the especially stressful conditions of complex humanitarian emergencies and their immediate aftermath.

8.                   To explore the heightened relationship between sexual activity and sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV transmission during periods of conflict and post-conflict recovery.

9.                   To reinforce participants’ knowledge of the risk factors for STD/HIV infection; their awareness of their personal risks for STD/HIV infection; and their knowledge and skill in preventing the spread of HIV and other STDs.

10.                To encourage participants to make a personal commitment to reduce their risk for HIV and other STDs and to reduce risk for vulnerable civilian populations which it is their duty to protect.

11.                To increase participants’ awareness of the elements of an effective HIV prevention message, and to encourage them to share effective HIV prevention messages with others.  In particular, to encourage participants to serve as peer educators by extending the awareness, knowledge, and skills gained in this training module to their comrades-in-arms and to non-combatants among whom they are deployed.

12.                To encourage participants to learn how to become early-warning sentinels in pre-crisis situations - alert to deteriorating public-health, socio-economic, and political conditions in the areas to which they are assigned, and with ready access to communication channels that extend upward in their command structures.

 

 

Appendix I

 

The Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS, a Collaborating Centre of

the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS)

 

The Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS (CMA) is an unincorporated association, a world-wide interest group of interested professional agencies, federations, ministries, and individuals addressing HIV/AIDS prevention and training in the military, peacekeeping, police, prisons, and maritime sectors.  It maintains technical support networks in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, and less-formal ties in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Purpose

The purpose of the Alliance is to promote inter-sectoral co-operation in combating HIV/AIDS and closely related diseases, sexually transmitted infections, and tuberculosis B though the promotion of effective health and prevention policies, strategies, and training programs in both civilian populations and the uniformed services. 

The Alliance supports HIV/AIDS prevention and care in institutional and sectoral settings that are among the various uniformed services.”  The uniformed services encompass military, security, police, paramilitary, and peacekeeping forces (at home and during deployment on foreign soil); personnel of the maritime, seafarer, and seaport sector; and the prison services (prison staff and prisoners), and their families and communities.

Membership

Membership in the Alliance is open to organizations, ministries and individuals active in and concerned about co-operation in combating HIV/AIDS.

Short Term Objectives:

to collect, analyse and disseminate information useful in the control of STDs and HIV in the uniformed services;

to encourage a prevention focus on STD/HIV/AIDS in all these uniformed services;

to develop an advocacy for a commitment to STD and AIDS prevention and care;

to support and co-ordinate operational research and epidemiology necessary to reach these goals;

to assemble and adapt documentation resources, planning and program management material, teaching modules, research reports and data, and printed articles;

to gather and make available policy recommendations;

to facilitate the exchange of such information among key military, maritime, prison, police, and civil bodies;  and

to provide culturally specific HIV/AIDS prevention education to uniformed forces personnel - including medical, nursing and training officers of UN Peacekeeping Forces - at home and during foreign deployment and travel.

Long Term Objectives:

1.  Collaboration between the uniformed services and national AIDS programs

  to facilitate co-operation between the national (civilian) AIDS program and the AIDS programs of the military/uniformed services in all countries; 

  to encourage examination of cultural and behavioral risk factors that contribute to HIV transmission; 

  to work on the specific issues that concern each branch of the uniformed services;

  to encourage education, prevention, and care programs for uniformed personnel; and

  to examine how demobilization can contribute to the national struggle against STDs/HIV and AIDS.

 2.  Sharing Assistance within the Sectors

  to encourage leaders in the uniformed services to exchange useful information on how successful prevention and behavior-change programs are structured, and

  to suggest policy options that are appropriate for the wider communities in which they live.

 3.  AIDS Prevention in Peacekeeping Settings

 to encourage prevention of HIV transmission involving UN/multinational peacekeeping personnel.

4.  Long-term Policies and Regional Stability

to focus attention on long-term strategic implications - such as the potential for contributing to regional instability through the erosion of military preparedness, loss of experienced seafaring officers and crews, and the return of sick prisoners to their home communities – which are by-products of widespread HIV infection in these personnel;

to support an open examination of the policy issues that are critical for a rational approach to HIV/AIDS prevention and care in uniformed settings

Accomplishments

Training and policy seminars, workshops and Conference round tables have been held in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, in collaboration with WHOs Global Programme on AIDS and with UNAIDS:

             Satellite seminar on HIV/AIDS in Military Populations, at the 9th World AIDS Conference, Berlin, 1993

Round table forum at the International Congress on Military Medicine, Augsburg, 1994

Planning Conference of the Steering Committee of the CMA B Washington, DC, 1994

One week AIDS in the Military Seminar, Harare, 7 African countries, 1995

One week AIDS in the Military Seminar, ChaAm, Thailand, 6 Asian countries, 1995

Papers presented at Asian, African, LAC Regional Conferences on AIDS, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999

One week Policy Workshop for 13 countries of Eastern/Southern Africa, Mangochi, Malawi, 1996

Seminar for NATO & Partnership for Peace countries, Brussels, 1996

Track D Forum AIDS in the Military at the 11th International Conference on AIDS, Vancouver, 1996

Policy Seminar in Washington DC, and a Forum for UN and foundations in New York, 1996

Plenary panel at International Congress on Military Medicine, Beijing, 1996

One week Military Seminar for 15 nations of Eastern and Southern Africa, Namibia, 1997

Alliance/UNAIDS Team visits to Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia

Military Seminar for 13 countries of Latin America/Caribbean, Honduras, 1997

Inter-Agency Consultation on the Prevention of HIV/AIDS in the Maritime, London, 1997

Three-day AIDS in the Military seminar for 7 countries of Eastern Europe, Milan, 1997

One week AIDS in the Military seminar for 18 Francophone West/Central Africa countries, Dakar, 1997

Technical support missions to Egypt, Chile, Peru, Panama, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Russia, 1998

Satellite seminar on “AIDS and the Maritime” at the 12th International Conference on AIDS, Geneva, 1998

Three-day AIDS in the Military seminar for 13 countries of Eastern Europe, Sofia, 1998

Three-day Strategic Planning Seminar for 7 countries of West Africa, Dakar, 1998

Four-day Philippine National Seminar on HIV/AIDS Prevention in the Uniformed Services, Manila, 1998

Participation in the Forum on Health & Human Security in Conflict & Transition Settings, Harare, 1999

Release of the 5-module Peacekeeping Training Curriculum on HIV Prevention & Behaviour Change, 1999

Participation in the Seminar on the Silent Emergency: HIV/AIDS in Conflict & Disasters,” London, 1999

Technical support missions to Cambodia, Ukraine, South Africa and the Lao PDR in 1999

Participation in Maritime Infectious Diseases Research Group/International Maritime Health Assn, Antwerp,

1999.

Participation in the 3rd All Africa Congress of Armed Forces and Police Medical Services, Pretoria, 1999

Activities foreseen for 2000/2001

Technical support and training support missions for the uniformed services in countries of Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia; participation in the 33rd International Congress on Military Medicine, Helsinki, and the 13th International AIDS Conference, Durban; training seminars on HIV/AIDS issues in peacekeeping missions; strengthening of the technical support networks for the uniformed services in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe; development of additional policy, planning and training documentation for the uniformed services in English, French, Russian & Spanish: consultations on the development of interventions in the maritime sector; research in the military, maritime and prisons sectors; and the search for best practice case studies for wider dissemination.

Recent Publications

         Newsletter 4 times a year 1995-1999, occasional papers, speeches, articles, reports of regional meetings

Winning the War against HIV and AIDS: A Handbook on Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of HIV Prevention and Care Programmes in the Uniformed Services, 1999

  CD-ROM Technical Reference Library 1999, for Winning the War against HIV and AIDS: A Handbook on Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation or HIV Prevention and Care in the Uniformed Services, 1999

     HIV Prevention and Behavior Change in International Military Populations, a 5-hour Curriculum produced by CMA for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, 1999

  AIDE-MÉMOIRES, Policy Guidelines for Military Planners and Commanders (developed by the Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations), 1999

International Military HIV/AIDS Policies and Programs: Strengths and Limitations in Current Practice,” by Yeager R, Hendrix C, and Kingma S, Military Medicine 165, Feb, 2000: 87-92.

 

Executive officers

Stuart Kingma, M.D., Director

20, route de lHôpital

CH-1180 Rolle, Switzerland

Tel:   +41 21 825 35 29   Fax:  +41 21 825 35 86

E-mail:  kingma@iprolink.ch

Rodger Yeager, Ph.D., Associate Director

369 Horseshoe Road

Morgantown, WV 26508-9108, USA

Tel:  +1 304 594 1960  Fax: +1 304 594 3686

E-mail: ryeager@wvu.edu

 

Norman Miller, Ph.D., Administrator

4 West Wheelock Street,

Hanover, NH 03755, U.S.A.

Tel:   +1 802 649 5296   Fax:  +1 802 649 2331 

 E-mail: norman.n.miller@dartmouth.edu

Appendix II  

The Civil-Military Alliance to Combat HIV and AIDS Regional Networks

A.    Eastern and Southern Africa – established in 1997 – 15 countries

Angola, Botswana, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe

-- Regional Network Coordinator is a member of the Zambian Defence Force

B.    Francophone Africa – established in 1997 – 20 countries

Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa), Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Rwanda, Sénégal, Togo and Tunisia

-- Regional Network Coordinator is a member of the Army of Sénégal

C.    Anglophone West Africa – established in 1998 – 5 countries

The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone

-- Regional Network Coordinator is a member of the Army of Ghana

D.    Asia – to be launched in the year 2000 – 7 countries

Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Viet Nam

E.    Eastern and South Eastern Europe – not yet fully established – 20 countries

Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and the United Republic of Yugoslavia – Regional Network Coordinator for 1999 is in the Hellenic Navy  

F.    Russian-speaking Eastern Europe & Central Asia – proposed – 11 countries

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan