ROLE OF UN POLICE EVOLVES FROM OBSERVING TO 'COACHING,' TOP ADVISER SAYS

New York, Jan 27 2006 - United Nations police must change from their traditional role as observers and monitors in peacekeeping operations to building capacity and skills among local forces so they are able to engage more effectively with the community, the UN's Police Adviser said today.

Mark Kroeker, who worked as a Los Angeles policeman for 32 years before joining the UN, said in the past police working on peacekeeping missions have been mainly involved in "monitoring, observing and recording" but a quiet revolution has been underway since 2000 moving the force to play a more direct, hands-on role.

"The fundamental purpose of police in missions now, all of us, is to build institutional capacity in post-conflict environments. We believe this is the principle function," Mr. Kroeker told the UN New Service in a wide-ranging interview.

"The new police officer is a coach, the old police officer was a watcher. And this new role involves such things as building police academies, reinstituting crime labs, designing and helping to implement traffic systems for cities or indeed building forces where none existed, as in Kosovo and Timor," he added.

Another recent success, said Mr. Kroeker, was in Liberia where with donor assistance the UN police unit had helped the local force build up and train its own crowd-control capacity.

He added that the more traditional monitoring role of the police has not been dropped completely. Rather, it has been transformed based on the understanding that for a fully effective UN police force to cope with the increased demands of UN operations in the 21st century, there had to be a change in focus.

"The traditional police officer was up there on the wall of the garrison looking at everything and reporting but the new one is getting off the wall, getting down there with the people to help make things right," Mr. Kroeker explained.

Currently, 94 countries contribute 7,258 police to UN peacekeeping operations worldwide.

UN POLICE STRIVE FOR QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
AS ROLE CHANGES -- TOP ADVISER

New York, Jan 30 2006 - As the role of UN police on peacekeeping missions evolves towards capacity building for local forces and away from strictly monitoring and observing, the need to recruit better quality officers becomes paramount, says the United Nations Police Adviser, citing this as one of the main challenges the division faces.

While noting progress over the past five years in moving the UN police to embrace this new "capacity-building" mission, Mark Kroeker acknowledges there is still work to do in changing the mindset of all officers as well as the people living in the post-conflict communities where they operate.

"The two big challenges that we face are both human. One is to find quality people -- quality advisers, quality leaders, quality trainers and mentors who can pass on their skills," he said, contrasting this with an emphasis on quantity of staff in the past for the more traditional UN police role.

"The other challenge is communication, because as much as we believe in the new mission in our division here so that we know where we stand, the challenge is to get this message out to the societies we operate in and more so to our own ranks," Mr. Kroeker added in an interview with the UN News Service at New York Headquarters.

"Leadership without communication is something you can't even call leadership," he pointed out.

As to how to attract quality, Mr. Kroeker said the division was trying a variety of means, including a more professional and demanding recruitment process and screening to get the best candidates -- a tactic he also said is being used to encourage more women officers to join the force.

Despite the bureaucratic inertia of any organization that is trying to change, and even more so for one representing 191 States, the Police Adviser said the role of UN police has to adapt to the increased demands of peacekeeping operations and he was pleased the idea of a more hands-on force is slowly catching on.

"visible sign of government and since security is the most important, fundamental need coming out of conflict, we need to build good police so that the people can be secure," said Mr. Kroeker.

Acknowledging the challenges faced in post-conflict countries where local police forces are politicized or under the control of the military or simply made impotent -- or, worse, through lack of funds and corruption -- Mr. Kroeker remains convinced that the UN police are on the right track in a battle they have to win.

"Police have to be accountable to the people."