From 27 November to 1 December 2016, Bangladesh Institute of Peace Support Operation Training (BIPSOT) conducted DDRC - Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) Course. The course took place in Academic Building of BIPSOT, located at Rajendrapur Cantonment adjacent to the Bhawal National Park, Gazipur. The course aimed to train on the peace and conflict issues, principles, procedures and practices involved in planning, coordination and conduct of DDR programs with a view to enhance capacity and effectiveness to perform in United Nations (UN) peace keeping operation. The course highlighted on IDDRS concepts, policies, strategies, environments, contexts, challenges, planning, implementation, vulnerability and sensibility of different groups, the cross-cutting issues involved in DDR. In addition to international ones, the discussions also included examples of national peace programs conducted by various governments including Bangladesh Government. There were two case studies where participants where arranged into syndicates and had to present their views. The course was highly interactive and expressed a lack of sufficient ICT support in the DDR process. It includes, lack of IT solutions for deduplication of participants, requirement of great flexibility on the planned solutions at all stages, identifying recurrence, ICT training for effective demobilization and reintegration phases, etc.
Annajiat Alim Rasel, Lecturer III and undergraduate course coordinator, Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) was nominated from BRAC University (BRACU) to participate in the program. Other invitees included potential participants from University of Dhaka, Jahangirnagar University, Army, Navy, Air Force, Police, Overseas, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), Ministry of Social Welfare (MSW), and Ministry of Women & Child Affairs (MoWCA). It may be noted that BIPSOT and BRACU signed MoU (1, 2, 3, 4) back in December 14, 2015. From BIPSOT, Chief Instructor Brig Gen Abu Md Shafayet Hossain, ndc, psc, Senior Instructor - 1 Col Mustafizur Rahman, Senior Instructor – 2, Col Abu Jahid Siddiqui, psc, Instr Cl A, Lt Col Md Shabbir Ahmed Siddiqui, and Course Coordinator & Instr CI-A Lt Col S M Ashraful Islam, psc, ASC facilitated in the course and shared their expertise about DDR. Key participants included Deputy Secretary, Ms. Raina Ahmed, Ministry of Women & Child Affairs (MoWCA), and Lt Col Rajapakse, Sri Lanka. Professor Lailufar Yasmin, Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka, was the guest speaker for two sessions, namely, “Children and DDR: Seen, but not Heard” and “Women and Gender in DDR”. Souvenirs were handed to civilians and overseas participants. The training concluded with a certificate awarding ceremony.