USIP's training of Rwandan peacekeepers deploying to the Darfur region of Sudan "creates awareness of typical problems in the mission area and provides an opportunity to learn and use skills to deal with those problems."
June 22, 2011
Colonel Bosco, commanding an infantry brigade deploying to the African Union–United Nations Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) next month: “USIP’s training is important for many reasons, but principally because it creates awareness of typical problems in the mission area and provides an opportunity to learn and use skills to deal with them.”
Trainers from USIP’s Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding completed a negotiation and conflict management workshop in Gako, Rwanda May 30–June 1 for 25 Rwandan Defense Force (RDF) military officers who will be leading an infantry battalion deploying to Darfur, Sudan. There were also two women nurses partcipating in the training, who will be playing an important role in mission outreach in Darfur.
Rwanda is the largest troop contributor to this peacekeeping mission, tasked with protecting civilians, ensuring humanitarian access, and promoting the peace process for Darfur that is being led by AU-UN. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and almost two million Darfurians have been displaced as a result of the Darfur genocide.
Protection of civilians is a core element of the training, which addresses not only its importance but also practical ways peacekeepers can respond to these crises. Training these officers, who will then train their troops, is an efficient way to help bring peace to Darfur and to reduce the cost of such interventions.
USIP trainers Ted Feifer, Matt Levinger, and contractor Anne Henderson taught skills not normally part of a combat soldier’s toolkit—communication, negotiation, and mediation—but which are essential to peacekeepers in their mission. Participants learned the skills and then applied them in practical situations, such as negotiating their way through or out of a roadblock by an armed group, or handling disputes over weapons in a camp for internally dispersed persons.
Participants in the workshop made clear that this was the first time they had ever been introduced to these vital non-military skills, that they now felt better prepared for their mission in Darfur, and wished that they had more time with the USIP trainers. According to Captain Kayatire, a Darfur peacekeeping veteran who heads the RDF’s ACOTA training, USIP skills building makes a vital contribution to the effectiveness of Rwanda’s UNAMID contingent. “To build peace in Darfur,” he says, “you need to be a great negotiator.”
The officer participants in the USIP workshop will now be teaching the course materials to the officers and enlisted men under their command, enabling all 800 men and women of the battalion to be able to use these skills to resolve conflicts without violence in the complex security environment of Darfur.
This was the USIP Academy’s 10th training in Rwanda and 25th training of African peacekeepers going out to Darfur, Somalia, and Cote-d’Ivoire over the past three years. USIP capacity building for these peacekeepers is conducted in partnership with the State Department’s Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program.
