More than 30 people, including military,
police and civilian personnel, yesterday, started a two-week peace support
operations logistics course at the Rwanda Peace Academy (RPA) in Musanze
District.
According to the Newtimes news,The course seeks to build the
capacity of participants drawn from seven regional countries to better perform
various functions in missions of deployment, according to Methode Ruzindana,
the director of research and training at RPA.
While officially opening the
course, Brig Gen (rtd) Andrew Rwigamba, the Director General of Foreign and
military Relations and Cooperation in the Ministry of Defence, said the course
was crucial as military, police and civilians carry out a wide range of
functions in peacekeeping.
“In today’s world, deployments
for peace support operations range from combat operations through peacekeeping
operations to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” said Rwigamba.
“This course is very important
because logistical resources are rarely adequate and yet peace support
operations are logistics-driven the world over. The scarcity of resources to
support peace operations makes it is imperative to train officers on logistics
planning in order to optimise resources,” he stressed.
“Officers in charge of logistics
should, therefore, be conversant with logistic concepts and organisations both
at headquarters and in the field. They should also be conversant with the
doctrine, policies and procedures of peacekeeping logistics.”
Rwigamba hailed the Japanese
government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for their
continued support to the academy.
Japan and UNDP gave the academy
grants of US$537,000 and US$500,000 in grants respectively this year alone to
support training.
The two development partners have
been supporting RPA since its inception.
Tomio Sakamoto, the counselor at
the Embassy of Japan in Rwanda, said peace support operations is a mandate of
his government.
He said the government of Japan
has been backing peace and social stability of Africa through the Tokyo
International Conference on African Development.
Since 2008, Japan has provided
more than US $39 million to support 13 PeaceKeeping training centres in Africa,
including RPA.
“Japan appreciates the
continuous peace efforts and security in the region, including Eastern Africa
Standby Force. I am sure RPA will play a vital role in further developing
regional and sub-regional capacity in conflict prevention, management,
resolution and post conflict recovery and peace building,” Sakamoto said.
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