From the 22nd to the 27th November 2010, UNITAR PTP, jointly with the South African Development Community (SADC), organised a Protection of Civilians Training of Trainers course at the South African Development Community Regional Peacekeeping Training Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe.

In his preface to Jean Marie Guehenno’s recent paper on Enhancing the Capacity of African Peacekeeping Training Institutions, Lakhdar Brahimi, highlights the pressing need for UN peacekeepers to be fully well-trained. Since then, the UN has been undertaken many more challenging missions, especially in Africa. African nations have commendably come to the fore when it comes to the providing troops for peace operations in conflict afflicted countries. However, further training is necessary to complement the indispensable political will shown by these countries which must match good will with much better capacities. Peacekeepers need to be adequately led, trained, equipped and afforded access to new methods of operating in multicultural and multidisciplinary environments that characterize present day conflict and post conflict environments.

The overall objective of the PoC ToT training programme, generously funded by the German Foreign Ministry, is to promote better understanding of the theoretical and practical framework for the protection of civilians in peace operations, and to enhance their training capacity in order to enable them in turn to pass on their knowledge to other peacekeepers as trainers, thereby creating a knowledge multiplier effect. The training was provided by a team of international experts, including two generals from the Nigerian Army. Participants included police, military, and civilian potential and current peacekeeping professionals from several countries of the SADC region. This course was then immediately followed by a 3-day pilot course on Protection of Civilians attended by 35 participants.