Page 15 - Coespu Magazine 2018-2

Civil, Police & Military Coordination

Since the end of the Cold War and following the globalization process, the international community has
been facing new challenges and problems, such as humanitarian crises, natural disasters, ethnic and
religious conflicts, transnational
organized crime and terrorism, which
affect in a significant way the life of
people all over the world. In facing these
situations, governments and international
organizations, by acknowledging a strong
link between development and security,
initiated multidimensional and
comprehensive approaches in order to
address in an efficient manner all these
challenges in highlighting the significance
of global security. This comprehensive
approach aims to promote strong
cooperation and coordination between military and civilian actors, including the police, involved in
peace operations by addressing several aspects, such as peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance,
stabilization, counterinsurgency, reconstruction and development aid.
Under the UN aegis, the so called UN-CIMIC is traditionally intended as the operational and tactical
coordination between the UN military and civilian partners, among them the civilian components of
UN field missions, UN Police, UN agencies, funds and programs, host national government, non-
governmental organizations, and grass-
roots organizations.
Furthermore, the civil-military
coordination is a wide concept with
many different competing definitions
and doctrines that describe essentially
the same activity, i.e. coordination
between civilian and military actors in
peace operations. Some of the most
common concepts are: Civil-Military
Cooperation (CIMIC) as used by NATO,
European Union and most countries in
Europe and Canada, and Civil Military
Operations (CMO) as used by the United
States of America (USA).
What the NATO, EU, and USA approaches to civil-military cooperation have in common is that they
see civil-military cooperation as a tool for command and control. It is something done in the service of

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