Featured Member: Cornelia Schneider

What is your current organizational affiliation, your position, and location of work? What are the current objectives that your department pursues?

I work with EUPOL Afghanistan (the European Union’s Police Mission) in Kabul, where I am Head of Rule of Law Reform. EUPOL in general seeks to contribute to the establishment of sustainable and effective civil policing arrangements in Afghanistan, with its Rule of Law Component assisting in the establishment of linkages between the police and the wider criminal justice system. We do this through focused mentoring and training activities with a particular focus on police-justice cooperation, anti-corruption, and human rights & gender. For example, EUPOL drove the production of a comprehensive, nation-wide training manual for police and prosecutors, which was jointly drafted and approved by all the relevant actors in the field, such as the Ministry of Interior, the Attorney General’s Office, the Supreme Court, the Bar Association, and the Ministry of Justice. My role is to coordinate these activities and to create synergies and common standards between, and for, our three operational units.

Could you briefly describe your first professional experience in humanitarian action, and your path that led you to your current position?

After a few years in commercial legal practice, I decided I wanted a change. A Master’s in International Relations combined with a Certificate in Humanitarian Studies allowed me to branch out and led to my first short-term consultancy with UNMIS in Sudan, which led to other consultancies, followed by some time as a delegate with the ICRC. Today, I am able to combine my legal qualifications and experience as a lawyer with my humanitarian expertise to work in the field of rule of law.

What do you particularly love about your work, what keeps you inspired?

The interaction with our local counterparts; being involved in projects of nation-wide importance; being able to shape processes that will bring about long-term change. Of course the ability to positively affect people's lives is a very strong motivational factor. I also love the versatility offered by a career in this field.

What has been an important or very memorable experience in your professional life, and why?

Experiencing first-hand the logistical masterpiece that lies behind humanitarian assistance. One of my early humanitarian assignments was to help with a food distribution for 70,000 IDPs in Eastern Chad, right at the border to Darfur. I had seen these kinds of distributions on TV many times. Whilst the misery prevalent in the camps might have been tangible even on the screen, the actual handing out of aid packages had looked quite straight-forward to me. Understanding the immense effort hidden behind such an operation – logistically, politically, security-wise, financially, and diplomatically – has been quite an eye opener.

What do you experience as a professional challenge?

Communication is definitely at the very top of my list of challenges! It is frustrating enough when, in interactions with your counterparts, you use an example or give an explanation that simply does not work - for cultural or linguistic reasons. But the worst is when you don’t even realize that you are miscommunicating! I observe this every day: non-local humanitarians or advisers explaining something to their local counterparts, counterparts nodding, both parties walking off believing they are in agreement when in fact they both understood totally opposite things…

Another frequent challenge for me in missions is to maintain an overview of the big picture without losing sight of the detail. The dilemma lies between the necessity to focus on my field of work and expertise, and the importance of understanding the complexity of the broader context in which my work takes place.

How far have you been able to maintain a normal personal life during your career? How important is social life and connections with colleagues to build resilience in the field?

We need to distinguish here between social life back at home and social life in the field – but in both cases, I have experienced vast differences from job to job.

On one end of the spectrum there is the job where I spent months tucked away in a remote desert base, with a handful of local staff for company, strict curfews, and no communication other than a satellite telephone for emergencies.  On the other end there is the mission with a large base full of hundreds of people, a gym, and a bar – or even the mission where we were able to live in our own accommodation.

My general experience is that mission life tends to create strong bonds between colleagues, which often last many years. At the same time, I find it hugely important to maintain contact with friends and family at home. Skype, Facebook, and the Internet in general have worked wonders to revolutionize these communications, and I can already detect a real difference between communications today and my first mission in 2005. At the same time, I believe one will be a much happier person if one is mentally prepared for possible periods of social isolation and for spending time with oneself.

Which book currently lies on your bedside table?

‘Indian Summer’ by Alex von Tunzelmann, which is about the handover of control from the British colonial power to two successor governments in independent India and Pakistan. The book closely follows Nehru, Gandhi, the Mountbattens, and other colorful characters, painting a vivid image of events that have shaped the entire region. I enjoy reading books that are set in the countries I travel to; India was my most recent destination. Although I have never been to Mongolia, I am also fascinated by ‘Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World’ by Jack Weatherford, which I am simultaneously re-reading for the third time. The most resonating lesson of the book, for me, is about propaganda - how Western powers, desperate to find a way of resisting an over-powerful enemy, managed to malign Genghis Khan so effectively that some 800 years later we still think of him as the quintessential barbarian. Weatherford actually describes him as a progressive leader ahead of his times.

Could you give a description of PHAP in one sentence?

PHAP is a great network and a professional resource, and an inspiration for training opportunities that I would like to pursue in the future.