International Responses

Over the past two decades, Australia has accumulated considerable experience with whole-of-government missions in complex environments, including in the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.

"Social networking and social media are playing an increasingly important role in responses to complex emergencies and natural disasters. The recent ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have highlighted aspects of citizen-led networking and communication that have captured the world’s attention."

This brief publication is an introduction to the complex business of civil-military-police integration. Hopefully, you will read it prior to an exercise, not an operation. But in either case it provides good advice. Many people have gone where you are going, and this is the distillation of their experience.

Following on from the ACMC Australian Guidelines for the Protection of Civilians (2015) this handbook aims to provide the ‘what’, the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of protecting civilians in violent contexts and is intended for people working at the operational level including government, NGOs, UN and other organisations.

These Policy Proposals are the product of a three-year Australian Research Council-funded project on ‘Strengthening the Rule of Law through the UN Security Council’.