Clingendael Academy, in cooperation with the Permanent Representation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN in New York, once again trained the five incoming elected members of the Security Council in preparation for their 2022-23 membership.

Representatives of Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana and the United Arab Emirates strengthened their negotiation skills by participating in a wide variety of negotiation exercises in the context of the UN Security Council. They got acquainted with several negotiation concepts and tools, such as the competences of an effective negotiator, the PIN-model, the 7 phases and the Thomas-Kilmann conflict handling modes.

Some of the characteristics of negotiations in the Council are the interplay between formal and informal negotiations, the apparent power differences, and text negotiations. Using the experiential learning approach, participants learned how they can influence negotiations in the Council on the dimensions of content, process, procedures and behaviour.

Additionally, diplomats from the Netherlands shared their take-aways from their membership in 2018 during a very rich Q&A discussion. Through this training we aim to contribute to the preparation and negotiation capacity of the incoming members.

On the last day of the training, diplomats who participated in the previous training in 2020 and who are currently in the Council (India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway) joined for informal conversations with their new colleagues. The training in general, has an additional objective of seeking to provide a platform for the E10 to build a network and thereby enhance cooperation.

This Clingendael Academy training has been recurring since 2015, and is regarded as one of the main capacity building opportunities for newly elected members. It is a result of excellent collaboration with the Permanent Representation of the Netherlands to the UN in New York.

We wish the upcoming members a successful time in the UN Security Council.