Raymond Saner, “The professional culture of a Diplomat”.

What is needed is solid craftsmanship and openness to new ideas The diplomat as a mirror of contemporary history Involving non-state actors, not excluding them Diplomatic competence as an extended term Entrepreneurial diplomacy
Business diplomacy of multinational companies Negotiation and conflict skills Cognitive and emotional flexibility Playing roles and not falling out of character Adhere to the limits to one’s own mandate.

Raymond Saner, (2011), “Training Diplomats in Management, Leadership and Negotiations with Non-State Actors”

European Diplomacy: Regional Cooperation, Lifelong Learning and Diplomatic Training, Diplomatic Academy Proceedings, Vol.8, Nr1, 2011, Diplomatic Academy, Zagreb, Republic of Croatia

Foreign Service officials are sometimes sent to MBA schools or private training institutions to take management and leadership courses. As a consequence, such outsourcing might not figure on the main course listings of diplomatic academies. Still, I would claim that training in management and leadership remains the exception and that it would be beneficial

No policy coherence? No poverty reduction

It is widely accepted that the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (2030 Agenda) for the benefit of least developed countries will require boundary spanning by United Nations agencies, G20 countries and leading development nongovernmental organizations. Realization of the Sustainable Development Goals also requires cross-sector cooperation and crossinstitutional cooperation among international organizations mandated by G20 members to implement their own development strategies for the poor.

However, international organizations are not sufficiently equipped to deal with the cross-sector and cross-institutional cooperation needed to achieve the goals, commonly known as the SDGs. They also are often not at ease in cooperating with leading nongovernmental and philanthropic organizations – even when operating in the same policy space.

 

The 2030 Agenda: no poverty reduction without policy coherence

Raymond Saner & Lichia Yiu, “The 2030 Agenda: no poverty reduction without policy coherence” G20 Germany 2017, Think 20 Dialogue, DIE Bonn, 28 March 2017

G20 member countries play a crucial role in international organisations by the collective size of their economies and combined political weight, both of which are needed to make the policies of international organisations as coherent as possible to reduce poverty in Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

External Stakeholder Impacts on Official and Non-Official Third-Party Interventions to Resolve Malignant Conflicts: The case of a failed intervention in Cyprus; CSEND, Geneva and shorter version in International Negotiations”

Raymond Saner, Lichia Yiu; (2002) External Stakeholder Impacts on Official and Non-Official Third-Party Interventions to Resolve Malignant Conflicts: The case of a failed intervention in Cyprus; CSEND, Geneva and shorter version in International Negotiations”, 6,3, 2001 ed. William Zartman

This paper focuses on the potentially positive and negative impact which multiple and competing external stakeholders (influential foreign powers, supranational institutions, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs from various countries) can have on official and non-official third-party peace building initiatives. The example selected in this article describes a Swiss NGO initiated inter-communal project on Cyprus. It analyzes the causes, primarily by external and to a lesser degree by internal stakeholders, which have negatively impacted this confidence-building project. The article is descriptive and narrative due to the fact that access to confidential information of key stakeholder governments and institutions remains limited. The aim of the authors is to use field experience to further develop theory and practice of official and non-official third-party intervention in a context of a persistent and malignant conflict characterized by multi-external stakeholder interferences, as is the case with the long-lasting conflict on Cyprus.