National Police needs more females in its ranks in the Eastern province of D.R. Congo

22 Aug 2013

National Police needs more females in its ranks in the Eastern province of D.R. Congo

Kisangani, 19 August 2013 – Congolese National Police in the Eastern province will launch soon a recruitment campaign for more women to join the police force.

To support this initiative, the UN Police (UNPOL) in Kisangani, the provincial capital, sought the collaboration of the Congolese national Radio and Television network, known by its French acronym RTNC, to come up with public service announcement that will be carried out by the local radio and television channels.

"The medium will be used to launch an appeal to the women in the Eastern province to get them to join the police force and have the female human resource upgraded within this security institution whose key mission is to protect the people and their properties," said Clémence Doamba, MONUSCO police chief in Kisangani.

The audio-visual medium will include a number of simulated activities designed to show the positive effects of the female police staff contribution to the maintenance of peace and order. As an illustration, female police members successfully contributed to the clean-up work for the protection of the environment and food hygiene. Another example is the one relating to the traffic regulation by female police staff which helped make traffic more fluid and safer.

Through mentoring from MONUSCO Police, members of the gender and child protection women police demonstrated their outstanding skills in handling cases of sexual violence, demonstrating their invaluable contribution to the police mission which receives traumatized victims.

According to senior officials from the National Police, the initiative is ambitioning to recruit roughly 300 new staff in the Eastern province, by giving priority to women in order to meet the requirement for mainstreaming the gender dimension into the national police specifications. The newly recruited will receive a complete training at the Kapalata training center, located eight km north of Kisangani.

Codjo Houegniglo/MONUSCO