UN Helps Train Timorese Police on Internal Discipline

UN Helps Train Timorese Police on Internal Discipline in Further Step towards Stability

New York, Oct 13 2011 - Police officers in Timor-Leste are undergoing a three-month training course on tackling internal misconduct in a United Nations-backed initiative to enhance their credibility in the streets as the country cements its recovery from an outbreak of deadly violence five years ago.

“A police force that takes proper action to address disciplinary breaches will gain trust and credibility in the community,” said UN Development Programme (UNDP) Assistant Country Director Alissar Chaker, whose agency is supporting the project together with UNPOL, the police component of the UN Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT), and the Norwegian Government.

The 160 officers from the justice section of the Policia Nacional de Timor-Leste (PNTL) will serve as discipline leaders once they complete the courses.

“Discipline is a key pillar of police credibility; that’s why both the PNTL and UNPOL consider this training as a high priority,” UNPOL Commissioner Luis Carrilho said of the courses, part of a $600,000 programme by the PNTL, UNPOL and UNDP to increase police capacity to deliver high-quality service to the people.

The programme supports five priority areas – legislation, training, administration, discipline and operations – as the UN continues to help the small country on the path to complete stability after tensions within the security sector led to deadly riots in April and May 2006, claiming dozens of lives and driving some 150,000 people, or 15 per cent of the population, from their homes.

At the time UNMIT was set up to replace several earlier missions in a country that the UN shepherded to independence in 2002 after it broke away from Indonesia. Earlier this year it completed the handover of full policing duties to the national force. It currently fields some 1,225 uniformed personnel, nearly all of them police officers.

“The officers in PNTL’s justice section welcome this training and the opportunity it provides to increase the responsiveness of Timor-Leste’s police force to these important issues,” PNTL Commander Carlos Almeida Sousa Jeronimo said of the programme, which began on 4 October and will run until 31 December.

For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news

ENDS

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