Press Kit
Fact Sheet 7

Today’s Peacekeepers


Civilian Police Bring Rule of Law to United Nations Peacekeeping

United Nations Civilian Police Adviser Kiran Bedi

Blue-helmeted troops watching borders and monitoring agreements have been the traditional United Nations peacekeepers. However, the complex conflicts to be quelled during the past decade have proven to the UN that for peace to be sustainable, the rule of law must be established first.

That has meant that the role of police officers, both international and domestic, has taken far on more significance within the mandates of UN peacekeeping missions.

Appointed in February this year as Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) Civilian Police Adviser, Kiran Bedi had had her hands full of dealing with internal conflicts, implementing the rule of law and training police and corrections officers during her 30 years as the senior-most female police official in India and governor of the largest correctional facility in the world—New Delhi prisons, with 10,000 inmates.

Ms. Bedi sees her primary role here as inspiring better training of UN police officers, who currently number more than 5,000. Most of these are deployed with the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), where police have had the unusual and ambitious — for the UN — mandate of law enforcement. Others are involved in police development primarily conducting training and institution-building, in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo and Timor-Leste, where police are working under an executive mandate.

“We train, mentor, hand over and step back,” says Ms. Bedi of UN civilian police. “It’s the nurturance of peace.”

The aim is to work with local police structures. An exception has been UNMIK Police who arrived after the Serbian state police had disbanded but before responsibility for law and order could be handed over from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) sponsored troops of Kosovo Force (KFOR). As the UN police bolstered its force and took over law enforcement, training of thousands of local cadets for a new Kosovo Police Service was ongoing.

The first days and months of UNMIK were difficult. In previous missions, the UN had deployed mostly unarmed police monitors. As UNMIK had total authority for administering Kosovo, the police now had to operate as law enforcers with weapons and with the most sophisticated of policing skills. In addition to working in an environment replete with illegal weapons, UN police lacked the most rudimentary resources for running police stations.  The basic recruitment qualifications — shoot, drive and speak English — were clearly inadequate for the post-conflict tensions in Kosovo as exhibited by revenge killings, organized crime and trafficking of humans, weapons and drugs.

Slowly, some say too slowly, UNMIK police grew into a 4,000-strong force with expertise in criminal investigation, forensics, border control, organized crime, financial corruption and just plain traffic control — an unforeseen problem in a province with frequent lapses in electricity, a surge of new and stolen cars and drivers without licenses and with liberal driving patterns.

At the same time UNMIK has recruited, trained and deployed a 5,300-strong multi-ethnic Kosovo Police Force (17 per cent of whom are women) who are daily taking on more responsibilities and independence. They are making more significant arrests of suspects in serious crimes — and controlling traffic. Murders in Kosovo dropped from 136 in 2001 to 65 in 2002, while traffic accident fatalities fell from more than 250 in 2000 to 132 in 2002.

 The reduction in crime rates in Kosovo reflects the goals of Civilian Police Adviser Bedi, who believes that training and transfer of skills are the main elements of UN police peacekeeping. “The contributing countries get a better police officer back,” she says. ”They return home with larger visions and better understanding.”

Some have argued that the UN or international community must have a standby force of international police, as it is difficult to expect military troops to do police work. DPKO police advisers say, however, that the UN is not eager to send more armed police into the field, but rather to support national or local forces to do their job better. UN trained police, such as those in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have also gone on to serve as peacekeeping police in other regions, such as Timor-Leste. 

However it is clear that to be effective particularly in the post-conflict transition period, peacekeeping must have a cornerstone in police, corrections, and justice. 

The Brahimi report called for expertise in criminal justice systems to be part of DPKO. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, and early in the Kosovo mission, DPKO learned that police, justice and prisons had to be considered as parts of a whole.

Skilled officers are sought out and interviewed at length. Special Assessment Teams go to contributing countries to recruit, and DPKO in New York interacts with Member States for the best candidates.

DPKO accepts about two out of 10 officers who apply. However it is still difficult to find police willing to serve in Africa. Member States contribution of human resources is crucial to peacekeeping in Congo, Ms. Bedi says.

Officers are paid by their home countries but receive daily subsistence allowance from DPKO. Often this is in sharp contrast to the wages of their local counterparts. For poorly paid local police in poor countries, learning about human rights and democratic policing may be interesting, but what motivates them to persist, once the UN leaves, especially in areas of ethnic conflict?

“There’s a bond,” Ms. Bedi says. “Our police all have the same issues at home. There is also professional pride….  We provide an environment where they can work together.”

The support of local authorities and assistance for law and order infrastructure is also key to successful UN-assisted police work. The city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, has one police car for 300,000 people, not to mention a lack of computers, radios, and paper, Ms. Bedi says. DPKO’s police advisers in New York work with donor countries to add hardware and software to the UN’s contribution of skills, human rights training and raising awareness among police.  Currently, that involves awareness about the trafficking of women, which DPKO has brought to the attention of Member States interested in contributing police. Not only must UN police learn how to break trafficking rings along with local authorities, but they must also adhere to strict rules of behaviour. UN police found in brothels are sent home.

Says Ms. Bedi, “We have to go from acquiring and transferring professional skills, to being better human beings.”