Bunia, November 16, 2019 - Twenty members of the Congolese National Police  Force (PNC), including two women police, from Isiro, Kinshasa, Faradje, Dungu and Bunia have been receiving a 12-day training since November 11 in Bunia, Ituri about securing of the refugees’ relocation process for the South Sudanese refugees settled in the Ituri and Haut-Uélé provinces.

This trainers’ training is supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and given by five UN Police Officers.

The objective of the training is to help the trainers acquire technical and sound educational skills to enable them to provide practical and theoretical trainings to other PNC personnel. Trainees will be expected to train their colleagues who, in future, will be entrusted the responsibility to secure the relocation process for the South Sudanese refugees. The rationale is also to prepare the Congolese police personnel to cope with the community policing context deriving from any securing process.

For Major Abeli ​​Mwangu, member of the Ituri PNC, "this training, organized for colleagues from Ituri, Kinshasa and Haut-Uélé, is critical insofar as there are internally displaced persons in those provinces and refugees in the Haut-Uélé; the Police key mission is to secure both the people and their properties as well as the internal or external displaced persons without exception given that they have rights but also obligations; therefore, the people who are supposed to protect them must be familiar with their obligations and rights.

MONUSCO/Bunia Police Chief, Wiem Chadlia Jrad, for her part, welcomed the UN joint initiative as "a proof of the implementation of the UN ‘’ONE UN" moto that is definitely instrumental in the protection of civilians.

" This training session, organized jointly with two United Nations partners: UNDP and UNHCR, is part of the implementation of the UNSC Resolution 2463 that focuses, inter alia, on the protection of civilians and empowerment of our PNC’s partners; it should be highlighted that civilians’ protection also includes the vulnerable section of the population, amongst others, the refugees and the displaced persons, "she further said. Training modules include communication, planning and organizing training activities as well as monitoring and evaluating.