The Vietnam Department of Peacekeeping Operations on April 14 held an opening ceremony for its second training course for UN staff officers with the support of the US’s Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI).

The course is taking place in both online and face-to-face forms from April 12 to 28. It is designed to prepare Vietnamese trainees who are about to join UN peacekeeping missions.

Participants also include officers involving in management, advisory work, research, and teaching at units related to peacekeeping missions inside and outside of the Defence Ministry.   

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign lecturers are set to join the course virtually.

The training is expected to helps improve the department’s capacity for organising international training courses on UN peacekeeping operations, with the aim of turning Vietnam’s UN peacekeeping training facility into a quality one in the region.

Colonel Nguyen Ba Hung, deputy head of the department, stated the organisation of this course shows a flexible adaptation to a difficult context in a bid to better prepare Vietnamese forces for participation in the UN peacekeeping mission.

It also contributes to strengthening the friendly relations between Vietnam and the US, the EU, and other partners in this field, he noted.

Stein Ellingsen, head of the foreign lecturer team to the course, highly appreciated Vietnam for becoming a reliable contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, and congratulated the nation on successfully deploying its level-2 field hospitals in South Sudan and soon its first engineer team in Abyei./.