EPES Mandala Consulting, the Founders and all its staff and team members, present their deepest commiserations and most heartfelt condolences to the people of Haiti whose capital city and nation have been devastated by the January 2010 earthquake.

We present our deepest sympathy also to our friends and colleagues in all the United Nations agencies in Haiti, whose operations and staff members have been shattered by the catastrophe.

One of our Haitian colleagues reports that her parents and her 102-year-old grandmother have been spared, but they are living in the street because the walls of the family house are too badly cracked to be safe… although the roof is still in place because it is built on pillars. Meanwhile all around them are neighbours and friends crying over lost children, parents and loved ones.

With more than one million people said to be without shelter, we offer our thoughts and prayers to the victims ; and while emergency relief is not an area of our special expertise, we will see in the coming weeks  what practical help we may be able to offer to the people of Haiti.

Our Brussels team will participate on the 5th and 6th of October at an EU workshop on the smuggling of small arms and light weapons. In partnership with the group IBF, we are advising the EU on tackling small arms trafficking and organised crime. The recent spate of assassinations in Guinea Bissau are directly related to mafia groups smuggling cocaine across West Africa and into Europe: the attorney general's life was threatened after she tried to tackle drug smuggling, the navy commander was arrested for drug-related activities, the army head was assassinated and then soldiers stormed the presidential palace and killed the head of state.

The Validation Workshop will bring together a number of experts from five continents, and the debate will assist the managers of the EU's Instrument for Stability (IfS) to identify key areas (both geographical and thematic) where the inter-regional fund of the IfS can make a measurable contribution to counter the trafficking of small arms and address the increased globalisation of organised crime.

 

Within this framework, Dr Poulton was in West Africa for the EU in July 2009. Here is a photo taken at a dinner with Dr Hallassy SIDIBE, expert in decentralisation and conflict resolution and Dr Mamadou KANTE who leads a USAID project in participative governance in Mali.