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  •   almost 9 years ago

Judging Criteria? U.S. Military in Humanitarian Sector?

Pardon my skepticism, but after 20 years in humanitarian work and crisis response, I'm a bit leery of any military efforts to "Improve" tools that are utilised by humanitarians.

With all due respect, your judging criteria is a tad vague and potentially subjective. Can you provide more information about your lone judge? It would be helpful to know what experience he will qualify his decisions upon. Is he career military? Emergency responder? Humanitarian?

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  • Manager   •   almost 9 years ago

    He is not the only judge, there will be more non-USG judges. Please view Mr. Becker's bio, he is the lead for this project. If you have other suggestions for speakers please do let us know. Very Respectfully,

    David C. Becker
    Director for Civil Military Activities Integration, Center for Technology and National Security Policy

    David Becker works to promote cross-cutting research and knowledge sharing between the US military and civilian organizations, from other parts of the US government to non-governmental organizations or international organizations, particularly in the fields of humanitarian and disaster relief, stabilization, or development. As Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Complex Operations at the National Defense University, David Becker continued a long-held interest in “contested development” and multi-disciplinary approaches to foreign assistance. Wrapping up a year of research and promoting best practices in stabilization and counter-insurgency for the “next generation of interventions” (post Iraq and Afghanistan), he is now working on civil-military integration in difficult environments. From 2007-2010 he served at the US Embassy in Haiti as the Stabilization Coordinator, leading an experimental inter-agency DOD-funded program to restore control to violent ungoverned urban zones by tightly integrating security and development across multiple agencies and with the UN. Post-earthquake he was the senior civilian advisor to the US military commander for the largest US military-supported disaster relief deployment in history. He spent 23 years overseas as a Foreign Service officer in countries with weak governance, active insurgencies and transnational criminal networks. Eight of those years were supervising large USG-funded security and counter-narcotics efforts in Guatemala (1992-1996) and Colombia (1997-2001). He also served in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, El Salvador, Honduras and even Miami (as a senior level advisor to a major telecom company’s overseas operations). From 2004-2006 he was the Foreign Policy Advisor to the TRANSCOM Combatant Commander, supporting the command’s transformation to new public-private operations in difficult global locations. A 2004 graduate of the National War College Masters program, he has published several articles on counterinsurgency, stabilization and complex and contested development.

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