Thank you, Madam President. Thank you to Vice-Secretary-General Lacroix, and thank you to the UN Commissioners of Police. We appreciate your very important annual briefings.
The United States praises the tremendous progress made over the past 60 years of UN policing. Today, UN police are being deployed to increasingly complex, dynamic and multidimensional missions. They play a critical role in the protection, management of public order, partnership with government authorities and the prevention and investigation of crime. The UN police now have the protection of civilian mandates in all the ‘big 5’ missions: MONUSCO, MINUSCA, MINUSMA, UNMISS and UNAMID. This proactive action poses new challenges for the UN police, and we are grateful for their efforts.
I would first like to congratulate Chief Inspector Doreen Malambo of Zambia on receiving the prestigious award from the United Nations Female Police Officer of the Year in 2020. We commend Doreen for her excellent work as an officer and her dedication to her duties as a leader in UNMISS.
The United States strongly supports the uniform gender parity strategy, and we call on countries that contribute police members to adopt policies that increase women’s participation in all levels of policing. We were delighted to see the UN police implementing the agenda for women, peace and security, which has already reached its 2020 targets for female police personnel at field headquarters and for both formed police units and individual police officers.
This is important progress and we look forward to seeing more women police play leading roles in rebuilding communities and to building trust between citizens and the security institutions they serve. This is especially true in South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Mali.
Madam President, we reiterate our support two years after the unanimous adoption of Resolution 2436 for the UN’s commitment to implementing an integrated performance and accountability policy. These policies should be based on clear standards for all civilian and uniformed UN personnel working and supporting peacekeeping operations.
In this regard, the United States welcomes the recently launched Integrated Peacekeeping Framework for Peacekeeping and Accountability, which seeks to harmonize the various assessment tools and processes used for military, police and civilian components of peacekeeping missions.
I thank the commissioners who delivered briefings today for their hard work so far. We must maintain our joint commitment to increasing peace performance by ensuring that the police have proper training and are held accountable for complying with UN standards.
The US supports Vice President Lacroix’s initiative to brief the Security Council on peacekeeping. We look forward to hearing candid assessments on performance, including shortcomings, success stories, and how Member States and the Secretariat can better address performance issues.
We believe there is still work to be done to review the policy on formed police units and to strengthen the assessment and evaluation process of the individual police officer.
With more and more complex missions around the world, we need the UN police to be professional, successful and accountable. The United States remains committed to supporting the UN police and to helping you meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
Madam President, I would like to conclude my remarks today with three specific questions to our Commissioners of Police and Vice-Secretary-General Lacroix:
First, how are performance data used to determine the rotations and deployments of police-contributing countries?
Second, how can we maintain the best commitment to protecting civilians during peacekeeping transitions?
And third, how can we ensure that a greater number of women are involved in police rotations and deployments?
Thank you, Madam President.