MANILA, Philippines—Twenty-nine police officers from the Philippines were deployed to the South Darfur city of Nyala Sunday as part of the build up of the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (Unamid) in the strife-torn Sudanese region.
The UN office in Manila on Tuesday said the Filipino officers will begin induction training before they are deployed across the region.
Aside from the Filipinos, 51 Tanzanian police officers and 44 Cameroonian police officers also arrived there the next day as more than 20 Nigerian police officers are in Khartoum and are also waiting for their deployment to Darfur.
With these new arrivals, Unamid police strength is over 2,000 personnel, or over 60 percent of its authorized strength.
Established by the Security Council in 2007, the mission is expected to have a total of 26,000 military and police personnel at full deployment. When fully deployed, Unamid will be the largest UN peacekeeping operation at this time.
Unamid is mandated to support early and effective implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement, prevent the disruption of its implementation and armed attacks, protect civilians, promote human rights, and support the establishment of the rule of law.
The conflict that erupted in the three states of Darfur, in western Sudan, in early 2003, between two armed groups and the Government of the Sudan, has been a humanitarian catastrophe.
The armed groups, the 'Sudan Liberation Army' (SLA) and the 'Justice and Equality Movement' (JEM), began the war with attacks on towns, government facilities, and civilians in Darfur, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of policemen and civilians and the breakdown of law and order in Darfur.
UN Security Council Resolution 1706 on August 31, 2006 created the Unamid to supplant or supplement a poorly funded and ill-equipped 7,000-troop African Union Mission in Sudan peacekeeping force.
In March 2007 the UN mission accused Sudan's government of orchestrating and taking part in "gross violations" in Darfur and called for urgent international action to protect civilians there.
According to the Philippine permanent mission in the UN in New York, the Philippines presently ranks 29th in the UN list of top troop-contributing countries with a total of 611 military and police personnel deployed in Afghanistan, Cote d’ Ivoire, Darfur, Haiti, Liberia, Sudan, and Timor Leste as of July 2009. It is also the third largest contributor from Southeast Asia next to Indonesia and Malaysia.
Ambassador Hilario Davide, Philippine permanent representative to the UN, said in his report to the home office recently that the country was also preparing for Golan Heights, its biggest and most challenging overseas operation since Manila expanded its support to UN peacekeeping efforts almost a decade ago.
“The Golan Heights is not only going to be the biggest peacekeeping operation that the Philippines will be taking part in, it would also be the most challenging,” Davide said.
He said the Armed Forces of the Philippines has begun preparations for the participation in the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (Undof) in the Golan Heights of the 336-member Philippine Battalion (Philbatt)—the biggest peacekeeping contingent to be deployed overseas since the Philippines took part in UN operations in Timor Leste in 2000.
Undof was an offshoot of the 1973 Yom Kippur War or the Arab-Israeli War and was established by Security Council Resolution 350 of 31 May 1974 to maintain the ceasefire and supervise the disengagement of Israeli and Syrian forces and the so-called Areas of Separation and Limitation as provided in the Agreement on Disengagement between the two parties.
The Philippines is slated to replace Poland in patroling and monitoring the southern portion of the so-called Area of Separation—a hilly 80-kilometer stretch in the Golan Heights that has been under UN supervision since 1974.
