UN police chief calls for Member States to contribute more officers for peacekeeping

United Nations Police Adviser Mark Kroeker has called on Member States to provide more police officers to peacekeeping missions, stressing that nothing is more important for countries emerging from conflict than providing “qualified and compassionate law enforcement.”

Mr. Kroeker made his remarks in Abuja, Nigeria, to delegates from around 30 countries participating in the second meeting of the International Policing Advisory Council (IPAC), an ad hoc advisory group to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations which this year is focusing on approaches to recruiting and training police officers for international service.

“We have unprecedented needs in the future for police from all the member countries. We call on these countries to give us very fine men and women who will serve with distinction in UN missions. We have as our goal to build institutional police capacity in places ravaged by war and for the desperate places of the world,” he said.

“With the challenges we face in the future, we need more people, more qualified people...from many contributing countries with an increased attention to participation of women in policing.”

The two-day meeting, which began on Monday, is being run in co-operation with Nigeria’s Government and the Nigerian Police, and the IPAC itself was a body created by Mr. Kroeker to examine the whole issue of international policing and how the UN can better perform this role.

“The IPAC is in many ways indicative of the new approach, transparency and seriousness we take to international policing and our mandates to support local police services destroyed or corrupted amid conflict,” he said.

“We want to help those most in need in post-conflict environments and no areas are more important than providing distressed populations with qualified and compassionate law enforcement.”

Members of the Council are drawn from all areas of law enforcement, including experts on the rule of law, leading academics and researchers, former UN Police Commissioners, as well as heads of national police organizations.

Over 8,800 police officers drawn from more than 90 Member States are currently engaged in 17 UN missions worldwide.