On the 6th of September 2021, I officially started my internship at the JCBRN Defence COE. During the subsequent six months of my stay at the COE, I was working on an overarching internship project. The topic of the project was "NATO-UN Strategic Level Cooperation on Consequence Management Focusing on CBRN Defence". The main objectives of the project were to identify challenges that both organizations experience in CBRN crisis management cooperation and propose possible recommendations that could overcome these challenges. In order to achieve these objectives, extensive open-source research and in-depth interviews with NATO and UN staff members were conducted as the main research methods during this project. This research resulted in the identification of twelve challenges in NATO-UN CBRN crisis management cooperation and the creation of thirteen recommendations.
The detailed explanation of the identified challenges, recommendations, and the supporting research can be found in the "NATO-UN Strategic Level Cooperation on Consequence Management Focusing on CBRN Defence" document. The internship itself was a very informative, rewarding, and overall positive experience. It has been a great introduction to the topic of international crisis management, and it was very interesting to observe how international organizations, such as NATO and the UN, deal with CBRN crisis management, and crisis management in general. Researching complex topics like CBRN crisis management, interviewing experts from NATO as well as UN bodies, and being able to propose recommendations in this domain as an intern was a very unique experience. All of this would not be possible without any support. I have had the pleasure to work with a team of highly experienced professionals in this field that guided me throughout the internship period. The experience gathered by discussing NATO-UN CBRN issues and receiving feedback from these experts was very valuable. Overall, I consider the internship to be a success and I would like to thank the JCBRN Defence COE for providing me with this opportunity.
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Author: Mr Aleks Kozuchowski