Subsequent to the meeting in Stockholm, meetings were hosted at the Russian Public Policy Centre (Moscow, March 1998), the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy (Amman, October 1998) and the Institute for Security Studies (Pretoria, November 1999). The fifth conference in the project is scheduled to be hosted by the US Army Peacekeeping Institute in May 2000. The project will also one final conference, probably in Asia and South America in 2000, before concluding at the United Nations headquarters in 2001. These organisations have been reinforced by associate partners and funders, ranging from the Swedish, Jordanian and Norwegian governments, to the L B Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre, United Services Institution of India, NATO Information and Liaison Office, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Hanns Seidel Foundation. The project is co-ordinated at the NDC by Ms Annika Hilding-Norberg, the Project Director and Co-ordinator of the Department for Strategic Studies, which is headed by Professor Bo Huldt.

There are a number of features that distinguish this project from other workshops and conferences addressing peacekeeping and peace support:

• The project ‘ownership’ — different from mere participation — is multicultural, multinational, multiregional, multidisciplinary and multireligious. The Challenges Project is co-ordinated at the NDC, but consists of a ‘coalition of the willing’. Organisations from the Middle East, Eurasia, Europe, Africa, North America and Asia are already engaged and actively involved in the project.
  
  
• The project aims to present a concluding report to the Secretary-General and the governments of member states of the United Nations in 2001. The concluding report will focus on issues discussed throughout the series and will seek to recommend remedies for problems in peacekeeping and peace support, and suggest their implementation at international and national levels. The report will include the theoretical themes addressed by the project; complexities stemming from civil-military relations; the role of regional arrangements and agencies in peace support missions; the changing concept of security; preventive diplomacy; confidence-building measures; post-conflict peacebuilding; mine prevention; peace support; and international law. Further issues include doctrinal developments; the use of force; and the impact of the media, information technology and technological developments on peace support operations.
  
  
• The project combines the theoretical challenges of peacekeeping and peace support with practical problems and possibilities for education and training. For example, directors of four national peacekeeping institutes and training centres participated in Amman. The programme have included visits to national peacekeeping academies, a police academy and a minefield.
  
  
• The project promotes and encourages bilateral and multilateral exchanges between influential organisations and individuals that normally do not interact on a regular basis. A faculty exchange between the Jordan Armed Forces Peacekeeping Academy, the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy and the L B Pearson Peacekeeping Training Centre was agreed to as a result of the Amman conference. Discussions dealing with the establishment of a Regional and Joint Peacekeeping Training Centre in Jordan with diplomatic, army and police components also resulted from the Amman meeting. The government of Sweden decided to become one of the funders of the Africa Early Warning Programme at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa following the Moscow conference. Exchanges between the Swedish and Russian peacekeeping training academies were explored and agreed to as another consequence of the Moscow conference.
  
  
• Finally, conference papers and the concluding report will be published in several languages to increase the pool of peacekeeping literature in languages other than English.

This monograph contains most of the papers presented at the conference on Building stability in Africa: The challenge for the next millennium that was organised by the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa, from 22 to 24 November 1999. The conference sought to place the focus of discussions on the challenges facing Africa in the 21st century. The result was a rich discussion of the nature of African conflicts, trends in peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance, regional capacity-building, comparative perspectives, doctrine and related subjects.

The Institute for Security Studies is an independent applied policy research institute that seeks to conceptualise the debate on human security in Africa. The Institute has offices in Pretoria and Cape Town and conducts research projects across the African continent in areas such as corruption and governance, crime, policing, arms management, early warning, peacekeeping, regional security, defence, justice, and civil-military relations. For more information on the Institute, visit the website at <www.issafrica.org>. Dr Jakkie Cilliers is the Executive Director of the Institute for Security Studies.

Ms Annika Hilding-Norberg is the Project Director and Co-ordinator of the ‘Challenges of peacekeeping and peace support’ project. She may be contacted at the Department for Strategic Studies, National Defence College, Box 27805, 115 93 Stockholm; Tel: +46 8 788 9391; Fax: +46 8 788 9499; <annika.hilding.norberg @fhs.mil.se>.

The organisers would like to express their gratitude to the Swedish National Defence College and the government of Sweden for funding the conference, and the Hanns Seidel Foundation for funding this publication.