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Q: Hello Stefanie. You're responsible for external relations for NATO member countries, in the Division of Public Diplomacy.
Could you explain to us the aim of the programs you run in this capacity?
A: Well NATO's Public Diplomacy policy is very much threefold. It's first of all about informing the public about the Alliance's broad agenda, and secondly about communicating with different opinion-formers in our countries. And it's certainly about promoting NATO vis-à-vis the outside world.
So all of my colleagues, the National Information Officers, or Country Officers and their assistants, design and implement various information programs aimed at reaching out to our publics, and aimed at communicating with the public. And they do so based on their specific expertise on a specific country, on the NATO country.
So while my section organizes a broad range of different information programs, and closely monitors the defence and security debate in NATO countries, they in that way support and complement Allied nations' public diplomacy efforts. Because at the end of the day, it's going to be nations, it's nations, it's allied capitals, who are responsible for promoting NATO vis-à-vis the outside world.
In other words, I would say that my section plays a supportive, but nevertheless crucial role in carrying NATO's messages to the publics. We are in a way the so-called window, NATO's window to the public.
Q: And concretely, what types of activities do you organize to reach these objectives?
A: Well, national information programs always include two sides, two aspects. An event side, and a communication side. And in terms of events, we do organize conferences, seminars, workshops, speaking tours to allied countries. As well as the classical briefing, our information programs here at NATO headquarters.
And in terms of communication, all of my colleagues spend a good portion of their time monitoring very closely the most important political trends in their countries, as well as cultivating their ties to key opinion-formers in those countries.
So for a good national information program, I'd say that the events side and the communication side always go hand-in-hand. Without knowing the most important political trends in the country well, without being aware and having good ties to opinion-formers in those countries, to those people who do shape the decision-making process in countries on security-related issues, you can't really put together a high-quality program, a high-quality and good conference or seminar.
Q: Stefanie, could you give us a specific example of an upcoming event?
A: Well one of the things at the moment that really keeps up busy is the organization of the NATO Public Diplomacy Workshop, or to be more precise, NATO's first Public Diplomacy Workshop.
The event will take place on the 20th of November in a downtown Brussels location. And for that purpose, we have invited senior communication officials from allied capitals, as well as public diplomacy practitioners from academia and from other parts of civil society.
Together with both the key officials from allied capitals as well as external experts, we would like to discuss and exchange view on both the current and the future public diplomacy challenges of NATO. Among the topics that are on our agenda, we would like to explore the results of the most recent public trends and polls on trans-Atlantic attitudes, as well as the challenges for public diplomacy campaigns in times of crisis.
We have invited really a good range of top speakers, from both Washington, London and other European capitals, and from NATO headquarters, and the ASG for Public Diplomacy, Monsieur Fournet, as well as the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, they will be addressing the audience.
And I'm pretty confident that this will be a valuable effort, a valuable event, both for NATO PD staff as well as for NATO delegations and for allied capitals. At the end of the day, we are all sitting in one boat, I'd say, so we need to coordinate our efforts well and do public diplomacy in a joint manner, in order to really promote NATO the best way possible.
Q: More generally, what are the target audience you work with and your main project partners?
A: Well as laid out in our strategy, our Public Diplomacy strategy 2003 and 2004, we would like to particularly focus on those parts of the public that play a role in shaping public opinion, especially on NATO issues and in a broader sense on security and defence-related issues.
Hence we are reaching out to members of Parliament and their staffers, to senior editors and journalists, to strategic thinkers, to senior academics, as well as to other so-called movers and shakers of the strategic communities in our countries.
Another priority group is of course the successive generation. And raising awareness about NATO among the youth constitutes of course a true and very much a major challenge for us. But I would like to say that in the previous year, we have already successfully managed in order to organize two events for the youth in specific.
On the margins of the NATO summit last year in Prague, in November, we have organized together with the U.S.-Atlantic Council, a so-called PAYS, the Prague-Atlantic Youth Summit, which was a student summit bringing together some 200 students from some 27 countries, both NATO member and partner countries. And the aim of this exercise was not only to familiarize these students with a summit, but also to bring them together with Alliance leaders.
So they met, apart from with NATO's Secretary Lord Robertson, they also met with a number of heads of states, of government, including President Bush. And of course this was a major effort and a major success.
A second event that I would like to mention in that respect, was a seminar that we organized in September of this year. The so-called YATA seminar. YATA stands for Young Atlantic Treaty Associations. These are the youth sections of our Atlantic Treaty Associations. And we had here some 60 representatives, young political leaders from some 24 different countries, both NATO member countries and partner countries, for a briefing program here at NATO headquarters.
As a specific highlight of this program, they gathered in order to deliver a memorandum on the future of NATO to the Secretary General. I thought this was a very unique product they delivered, because it was their thoughts, their very unique ideas about the future of NATO. And my understanding is that the Secretary General Lord Robertson also liked very much meeting with these youth.
So undoubtedly, the youth constitute a major target group for us and we are looking forward to also having, if possible, a second youth summit in Istanbul next spring.
As far as our main project partners and NATO countries are concerned, they of course differ, I mean, from country to country. Because the strategic community in a country, in a member country, is very unique.
But in a more general sense, we work together with NGOs, we work together with universities, we work together with the think-tanks. We work together with even human rights organizations. So it differs really a lot with whom we work in a country. But at the end, I think each and every Information Officer does have his own network and can say best with whom he or she would like to work in order to bring the best results about.