Award to Police Training for UNAMID

The "Webber Seavey Award ” programme is a joint initiative between the IACP and Motorola, and the prize is awarded the 25 best of about 200 projects submitted from around the world.

The 3PDTID – the joint African Union–United Nations Mission in Darfur – is the largest deployment of individual police officers in the history of the UN. The three-fold purpose of the initiative is to: 1) ensure development and delivery of a standardised police pre-deployment training curriculum; 2) increase the number of officers receiving such training to 70%; and 3) achieve these goals at little or no additional cost.

The UN Darfur programme reached the semi-final and was honoured at a ceremony during the Denver conference. The training initiative was founded in New York in 2008 as a cooperative programme between the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the donor countries of Norway, France, Germany, Sweden, USA, Finland, Italy, UK, Canada and Australia. The programme is run by the so-called Police Donor Working Group, who meet monthly in New York to – among other things –identify training needs for the pre-deployment of police to UNAMID.

Norway has through the Training for Peace in Africa programme (TfP) been a significant actor in the training and has contributed greatly to the success of the initiative. With due right, the TfP should regard the award as an acknowledgement of their achievements. When the training initiative was launched in early 2008, less than 10% of police officers were receiving any form of preparatory training before joining the UNAMID force. Just a year after its inception, the initiative has exceeded its target, with nearly 80% of deployed officers having received such training.

And, importantly, the successful curriculum has been further developed to be adopted as standard pre-deployment training for all UN police peacekeeping missions. Coordinated bilateral assistance has allowed the training to be self-sufficient.

Chief of the Strategic Policy and Development Section, Andrew Carpenter (DPKO) and Counsellor/Police Adviser Odd Berner Malme, Norway’s Permanent Mission to the UN, attended the ceremony in Denver and accepted the award on behalf of the project.