The course consists of twenty students from following countries; Australia, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Ghana, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and Sweden. The facilitators are from the UN DPKO.
The personnel of SWEDINT and the Swedish National Criminal Police, Peace Support Operations, have been instrumental in supporting the preparations and hosting the course.
The course is one of a few resent historic moments for the police component in UN peacekeeping. For the first time in UN history there is now established what we call “minimum requirements for pre-deployment training for UN Police” and related training materials.
The pre-deployment training program consists of 12 specific training subjects in combination with the recently revised Core Peacekeeping Training Materials (CPTM - previously known as SGTM).
The 12 Specialized Training Materials (STM for UN Police) have been developed over the last more than two years with the engagement of over 70 police officers with peacekeeping training experience representing all regions of the world. During this process, draft training material has been successfully used in the UNAMID project since Feb. 08, and it forms the substantive peacekeeping training basis for the newly developed draft curriculum for Formed Police Units.
Now the next phase starts; Training of Trainer courses. This is the first of a series of courses that will be held on mainly regional basis throughout the world – the next in Ghana In July.
The purpose of the courses is to communicate the material to all peacekeeping training partners and promote the essential issue of preparing peacekeepers properly before they venture into new challenges and tasks in the context of UN peacekeeping operations.
On the course we offer the opportunity to study and interpreting the training materials, practice delivery, enhancement of training skills, and finally and opportunity to join the global community of peacekeeping trainers.
In other words, the course is a platform for intense work, discussions, brainstorms, case studies, innovation, feed-back, creativity, high spirits and great team work…and will hopefully trickle down to implementation of the training standards in the countries represented at the course.