RKI hosts 10-day simulation exercise with UN experts

Did you know that the Robert Koch Institute offers jobs where you collaborate with the United Nations ? And where you think up a 10-day real-time simulation and brief role players on the storyline?

Within our Centre for International Health Protection (ZIG), there is a project team that is funded by Ausw?rtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) Germany . The team cooperates closely with the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) on preparing experts for a potential bioweapons’ investigation. The so-called United Nations Secretary-General’s Mechanism for the Alleged Use of Biological and Chemical Weapons (UNSGM) allows the UN Secretary General to send a mission team to investigate when a UN member state suspects the use of biological or chemical weapons. Most prominently, the UNSGM was activated 2013 in Syria to investigate if chemical weapons were used. With the idea to prepare for potential future bioweapons allegations, the project team at RKI tries to equip potential mission team members with the skills they might need.

One of the best ways to train for such a case are simulation exercises, where participants are confronted with a fictitious allegation involving for example an unusual disease outbreak and need to immerse themselves in the situation. The RKI-UNSGM team recently conducted the second exercise that has been offered so far for the UNSGM in Berlin – with two years of preparation and including stakeholders and partners from several countries. The RKI invited international experts to prepare for a fact-finding mission in a fictitious UN headquarters and then to be deployed to the country of the incident. All preparations were meant to ensure that the participants can act as realistically as during a real mission: Develop a mission plan, prepare equipment for sampling, decontamination, personal protection, communication and documentation (amongst other things), travel to the site of the incident, negotiate with the host country, interview witnesses and potential victims, collect samples at different sites, and prepare a report about their findings – all of that in a relatively short amount of time.

While the exercise participants did their work, the RKI team in the background simultaneously needed to think one step ahead: What information piece of the puzzle should the participants receive next? How to react to the unexpected decision that the mission team just took?

In preparation of the exercise, the RKI-UNSGM team had to develop fictitious personas and brief role players. Venues and scenes needed to be established, equipment and requisites had to be organized. All in all, the mission team consisting of experts from several UN member states was able to go through an entire UNSGM mission including exchange with designated laboratories and different entities from the United Nations.

Read more:

??Secretary-General’s Mechanism for Investigation of Alleged Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (UNSGM)

??UNSGM project at the Robert Koch Institute

??Centre for International Health Protection (ZIG)