Home | DCAF – Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance

Creating a safer environment for sustainable development

Driving innovation
in policy and practice

Promoting good governance
of the security sector

Strengthening global support
for better security sector reform

Promoting gender equality
for inclusive security

News

Arrival of DCAF’s new Deputy Director

We are excited to welcome Béatrice Godefroy to our leadership team. Beatrice is a seasoned professional with 20 years of experience in peace, security, humanitarian action, and climate. Her career includes leadership roles at the Climate Action Accelerator, Center for Civilians in Conflict, and Médecins Sans Frontières. Among other things, she has helped pioneer strategies to protect civilians in conflict and mitigate the impacts on communities of the privatization of war, security force assistance activities, and hybrid warfare. Beatrice will play a pivotal role in overseeing the implementation of our new 2025-2030 Strategy.

14 Feb 2025

Strengthening regional cooperation in cybersecurity

Recently we brought together representatives from three Western Balkan computer security incident response teams for a knowledge exchange with CERT Polska, learning more about their work and cybersecurity best practices. The two-day training, hosted by the Albanian National Cyber Security Authority, covered critical topics such as malware analysis and phishing. This event is part of our multi-year project fostering collaboration between EU and Western Balkan CERTs to build stronger cybersecurity capacities across the region.

13 Feb 2025

Improving the gender-responsiveness of armed forces in Lebanon

Recently DCAF trained 800 new recruits at the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) Academy in Beirut on conflict sensitivity, mediation skills, and how to take a gender-inclusive approach to their work. The training is part of a project funded by Global Affairs Canada to increase gender-responsive security provision in Lebanon. The training curriculum was based on lessons learned from previous DCAF trainings with the ISF and other Lebanese security agencies. This comes in the context of the first major recruitment of women into the ranks of the ISF since 2011-2012, which is part of its commitment to foster a security sector that is inclusive and identifies and responds to the different needs of women, men, girls, and boys in the communities they serve.

07 Feb 2025

Protecting the rights of armed forces personnel

DCAF had the pleasure of welcoming Sylvia Schär Hahn and Stefan Junger (2nd and 3rd from left), co-heads of the Confidence Center for the Swiss Armed Forces, for their first formal exchange with our Director Nathalie Chuard and members of our team working on ombuds institutions, Hans Born and Daniel Reimers. They discussed future avenues for collaboration in an exchange that highlighted our shared commitment to fostering accountability and the protection of human rights of armed forces personnel as a cornerstone of good security sector governance.

05 Feb 2025

Contributing to the Peacebuilding Architecture Review

Through our Policy & Research team, DCAF has been feeding key lessons from research and our SSG/R programmes around the world into the ongoing conversation on how to strengthen the UN’s efforts on violence prevention and peacebuilding. Among our recommendations: Member States should have national prevention strategies that tackle systemic drivers of violence and have good governance at the core. And we must look for greater coherence across the UN pillars to achieve sustainable and impactful results, including by better integrating issues such as the prevention of violent extremism into broader peacebuilding efforts.

03 Feb 2025