Cairo, Egypt – CCCPA--in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Interior, the Egyptian Agency of Partnership for Development (EAPD), and the UN Police Division--organized a workshop on the implementation of the new “UN Standard Operating Procedures on the Assessment and Evaluation of the Formed Police Units Performance in UN Peacekeeping Operations”.
Forty-nine serving (or nominated) UN Formed Police Unit Commanders, representing various Member States, attended the workshop from 19 to 23 January 2020. This workshop was the highlight and final in a four-part series aimed at rolling out the new standard operating procedures; the previous three workshops were held in China, Ghana and Italy during 2019.
In his opening remarks, Assistant Minister of Interior and Director of Training and Development, General Ismail ElSayed, outlined the history of Egypt’s police contribution to UN peacekeeping starting 1989, when Egyptian police formed part of
the civilian police contingent in the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) in Namibia. Since then, Egypt has contributed with 6,500 police officers and non-commission officers in 22 conflict areas, and is currently ranked the 3rd largest police contributor to UN peacekeeping missions.
UN Police Adviser, Luis Carrilho, expressed his gratitude towards the Egyptian Government and CCCPA for hosting the workshop. He further expressed his appreciation of the international community’s collective commitment to improving the performance of UN peacekeeping operations--highlighting ongoing reform efforts, most notably the UN Secretary-General’s “Action for Peacekeeping” (A4P) initiative (including developing an integrated performance policy framework), and the Declaration of Shared Commitments. Mr. Carrilho emphasized the importance of “enhancing the effectiveness of UN formed police units, which represent two-thirds of all police officers serving in UN peace operations.’’ He stated that “it is in the interest of all of us here, the entire Organization, as well as our police-contributing countries and Member States, that formed police units have the skills, training and support they need to carry out their mandated tasks.”
On his part, Deputy Assistant Foreign Minister for UN Affairs, Ambassador Ihab Awad, reiterated Egypt’s support of ongoing reforms in the UN peace and security architecture, including endorsing the A4P initiative and the Declaration of Shared Commitments: “We are committed to ensuring that these reforms materialize in greater visibility and effectiveness.” He highlighted how Egypt, as a top troop-and police-contributing country has been at the forefront of efforts advancing the implementation of A4P initiative and the Declaration of Shared Commitments, including through developing the Cairo Roadmap for Enhancing the Performance of Peacekeeping Operations: From Mandate to Exit as a comprehensive, integrated and balanced framework that reemphasizes the responsibilities of all stakeholders to enhance the performance of peacekeeping operations. He also underlined Egypt’s conviction that peacekeeping effectiveness should be measured throughout the mission lifecycle, from mandate design to deployment, and from structure configuration to review and exit: “Objective assessment of peacekeeping performance must be linked to a broader performance assessment framework that would measure adequacy of resources, the extent to which the mission’s configuration is appropriate in relation to both its mandate, operational and political environment, as well as troop and personnel readiness.”
Deputy Secretary-General of EAPD, Ambassador Hesham ElMekwad, highlighted the Agency’s various capacity-building activities for African countries, including peacekeeping and combating terrorism. “EAPD is keen to deploy experts to support brotherly African countries in building their national security institutions, and to host African students in the Egyptian Police Academy,” he stated.
Both this workshop and the “Training of Trainers Course on the Protection of Civilians in UN Peacekeeping Operations” (held in October 2019) were pledged by Egypt during the 2019 UN Peacekeeping Ministerial Conference.
