Police to set up regional peacekeeping centre

The Rwanda National Police (RNP) will soon establish a Peace Support Operation (PSO) centre to train regional forces in peacekeeping operations. CSP Simon Peter Mukama the Director of PSO within the force revealed this yesterday in an interview with The New Times. “The centre will see officers selected under the United Nations-Select Analysis Test (UN-SAT) within the region trained before they are deployed to various operations,” Mukama said. According to Mukama, the centre that will be established at Gishali Police Training School in Rwamagana District, will be operational by the end of next year. The centre, funded by German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), will have the capacity to accommodate 400 local and 100 international trainees, all under UN-SAT. “It will also be helping us prepare our FPU (Formed Police Unit) with peacekeeping skills. Rwanda is among the first troop contributing countries to UN missions and we used to send our UN-SAT officers for training in other countries,” he said. Currently, there are about 128 police officers on UN mission in Sudan (UNAMIS), Darfur (UNAMID), Haiti (MINUSTA), Liberia (UNAMIL) and Chad (MINURCAT). 238 others are yet to be deployed in Sudan, Darfur and Haiti. Ends