UNITED NATIONS POLICE

Three UN police investigating a traffic accident

United Nations Police play a crucial role in UN peace operations. They currently participate in 18 different field missions around the globe. Every day, more than 9,000 police officers from 92 countries go on patrol, provide training, advise national policing services, help ensure compliance with human rights standards and assist in a wide range of other fields.

The benefits of this work are clear: UN Police help to create a safer environment where communities will be better protected and criminal activities will be prevented, disrupted and investigated. The diverse national experiences of United Nations Police officers and their commitment to peace and security are their best tools to promote the rule of law.

The United Nations has been deploying police officers for service in peace operations since the 1960s. Traditionally, the mandate of the police components of peace operations tended to be limited to monitoring, observing and reporting. Beginning in the early 1990s, advisory, mentoring and training functions were integrated into the dominant monitoring activities in order to offer the peace operations the opportunity to act as a corrective mechanism on the national law enforcement agencies.

Moreover, police components with responsibilities for interim law enforcement were established at the end of the 1990s in Eastern Slavonia, Kosovo and East Timor. The Panel on United Nations Peace Operations concluded in 2000 that the primary goal of the police components of peace operations should be "to focus primarily on the reform and restructuring of local police forces in addition to traditional advisory, training and monitoring tasks" .

All activties of the police components of United Nations peace operations are supported by the Police Division of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations.