Civil Military Cooperation (CIMIC) Seminar took place in the Headquarters Multinational Corps Northeast (HQ MNC NE) from 5 to 7 April 2011.
When the military go on a mission, they have to deal with a large range of different challenges. A major part of these challenges is managing the whole spectrum of military and civilian interactions. For the military it is not easy but necessary to consider integrating civilian requirements into the military planning and execution of operations. In order to bring both the military and the civilian organisations together, the military refer to CIMIC, which stands for Civil Military Cooperation.
Due to the fact that civilian environment is in a constant development, military personnel responsible for CIMIC need to update concepts of mutual cooperation on a regular basis. In order to provide the NATO CIMIC community such platform for discussions and sharing information, HQ MNC NE CIMIC Branch from G5 Staff Division hosted a CIMIC Seminar in Baltic Barracks. Among the invited participants, there were personnel from Allied Joint Force Commands Brunssum, Naples and Lisbon, Allied Force Command Heidelberg, NATO Deployable Corps-Greece, NATO Rapid Deployable Corps-Turkey and Eurocorps, representatives of the Danish Army Fire Support Centre and CIMIC, Danish Army Operation Command, Polish Central CIMIC Support Group, CIMIC Centre of Excellence, and Polish Training and Doctrine Centre.
The seminar started with a briefing delivered by a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who explained to Headquarters’ Senior Officers how the ICRC works, how they plan and execute their missions and how the ICRC sees the cooperation with the military.
The following days were aimed at the exchange of mission experiences of HQ MNC NE personnel’s last deployment to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan in 2010, as well as information briefings and open discussions about the new NATO structure and doctrine developments.
