News

Clingendael Academy's mission to Bhutan
22 Nov 2016 - 17:28
Source: Clingendael Academy

Bhutan is a small country in South Asia, sandwiched between India and China, which has followed in the last decade a quick path towards democratisation and modernisation. Last week, Clingendael Academy fellows Tim Masselink and Marianne Rogier travelled to this country to identify potential ways of starting a new cooperation between Clingendael Academy and the Bhutan Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the field of diplomatic trainings. During this needs' assessment mission, ways were explored of involving Clingendael Academy with the training of Bhutanese diplomats and with capacity-building of Bhutan own training institute for diplomats and civil servants. The mission was organised at the request of the King of Bhutan and facilitated by the Netherlands embassy in New Delhi.

Programme Bhutan

The activities carried out in Bhutan involved a number of high-level meetings with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the various Department Directors and Heads of Division, as well as an interactive workshop to identify training needs. In addition to this, the Clingendael team offered a skills-training workshop on negotiation techniques for a group of 20 Junior and mid-career diplomats. It is hoped that more workshops and activities will be organised in the future as a follow-up to this mission.

Experience in capacity building

Clingendael academy has a long-standing experience with capacity-building of diplomatic training institutes. Our academy has over 20 years of experience in diplomatic training and is offering its advice and expertiese to other diplomatic training institutes across the world. For example, over the past year, Clingendael engaged in the area of capacity-building with Latin America, Palestinian Territories and South Africa. To learn more about our work, methodology and previous work, please consult this webpage.