News

The Swiss thinktank DCAF, or Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, recently released an update to its Gender and SSR Training Resource Package.

This latest release focuses on Penal Reform and Gender and marks the 11th component of the training package. DCAF's press release offers more details on the contents:

• Key terms and messages for training on penal reform and gender
• 11 training exercises, from 20 to 75 minutes, suitable for use in a training on penal reform and gender, or in a gender training session
• Topics and tips for facilitating discussions on penal reform and gender
• Case studies from Afghanistan, the Russian Federation and South Africa
• A list of additional training resources on penal reform and gender.
• Developed as a companion to the Gender and SSR Toolkit, the Gender and SSR Training Resource Package is a series of practical training materials to help trainers to integrate gender into SSR training, and to deliver effective gender training to security sector audiences.

For more information, please visit DCAF's publications page. ()

INPROL was recently notified of an upcoming lecture at Case Western University by Sir Christopher Greenwood, a judge on the International Court of Justice. The event will take place on Wednesday, April 7, 2010, from 4:30 to 5:30pm. Here's a short description from the Case website:

The decades since the Second World War have been the ‘Age of Human Rights’ and it is one of the proudest achievements of international law that this development has placed the rights and well-being of the individual at the heart of international law and relations in a way which would have been inconceivable not long ago. Yet within international law, human rights law is not alone in having the welfare of the individual as its priority; international humanitarian law has long sought to protect the individual from the worst excesses of war. Are these two bodies of law mutually exclusive ? Do they conflict or are they capable of of playing complementary roles ? Judge Greenwood will draw on his experience both as an academic and a practitioner in addressing these questions.

The event is free, open to the public and will also be webcast live. For more details, please see this page. ()

The Center for Complex Operations and the US Institute of Peace are co-sponsoring an event on March 5, 2010, on the relationship between Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) and Security Sector Reform (SSR). The event agenda may be accessed here.

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP at NDU's website. ()

A number of our INPROL members working in Haiti are still unaccounted for after the earthquake. We are hoping and praying for their safety. If you have been in touch with any of our INPROL colleagues in Haiti, please let INPROL know. Our thoughts go out to them, their families and all those who have been affected by this terrible disaster.

At this time, many of us feel helpless to assist. However, there is something we can all do right now. There is a massive humanitarian operation underway right now and funding is needed for rescue efforts and to provide healthcare, food, shelter and water to those affected by the earthquake. If you are based in the US, you can donate by texting Haiti, H-a-i-t-i, to 90999 and $10 will automatically be billed to your cell phone. For those outside the US, you can also donate to aid agencies working in Haiti right now. The following sites have links to some of them:

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live/

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/world/story/52530CC5AD9A5E99862576AA0068165D?OpenDocument ()

INPROL is pleased to announce the release of two new Consolidated Responses: "Establishing and Reforming Bar Associations in Post-Conflict States" and "International Standards that Relate to Detentions, Corrections, and Prisons." ()