NATO/Zentralasien

17–18 Feb. 2009 A recent work­shop in Almaty, Kaza­khstan, pro­vid­ed a valu­able oppor­tu­ni­ty to exchange expe­ri­ences on the reset­tle­ment and retrain­ing of released mil­i­tary per­son­nel in Kaza­khstan and oth­er Cen­tral Asian coun­tries.

The main areas of dis­cus­sion were: 

• assess­ing the need for reset­tle­ment with a spe­cial focus on Kaza­khstan and Kyrgyzstan
• shar­ing lessons learned from exist­ing reset­tle­ment programmes
• ongo­ing coop­er­a­tion pro­grammes between NATO and Part­ner countries
• key prin­ci­ples for a suc­cess­ful reset­tle­ment policy.

The work­shop was well attend­ed by par­tic­i­pants from Allied and Part­ner coun­tries, as well rep­re­sen­ta­tives from inter­na­tion­al Insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Organ­i­sa­tion for Migra­tion (IOM) and the the Region­al Arms Con­trol Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Imple­men­ta­tion Assis­tance Cen­tre (RACVIAC).

The event, which took place on 17 and 18 Feb­ru­ary, was co-orga­nized by NATO and Kaza­khstan under the aus­pices of the Euro-Atlantic Part­ner­ship Coun­cil in Eco­nom­ic Com­mit­tee ses­sion. It was the first time such a ses­sion had been orga­nized in Kazakhstan. 

Back­ground
The work­shop fol­lowed a pre­vi­ous con­fer­ence on reset­tling redun­dant mil­i­tary per­son­nel, joint­ly orga­nized by NATO and RACVIAC in Zagreb, Croa­t­ia, in Decem­ber 2008. 

Reset­tle­ment and retrain­ing of for­mer mil­i­tary per­son­nel is among the main objec­tives of the chap­ter on defence eco­nom­ic issues in the Euro-Atlantic Part­ner­ship Work Plan (EAPWP).

NATO and indi­vid­ual Allies are work­ing with Part­ners in this area to help mit­i­gate the neg­a­tive socio-eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of defence down­siz­ing and to facil­i­tate the tran­si­tion of for­mer mil­i­tary per­son­nel into the civil­ian sec­tor of the economy. 

Source: NATO