Defence Ministry lectures at Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has held a public lecture on the topic: ‘Sierra Leone in peacekeeping operations: prospects and challenges.’

In her welcome remarks, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Mrs. Ebun Jusu, referred to the topic as very appropriate for Sierra Leone in the light of the huge interest the country has invested in peacekeeping, noting that the country has gone through eleven years of devastating civil war in which it benefited from peacekeeping operations by ECOWAS and the United Nations.

“Sierra Leone is happy to pay back as there are Sierra Leonean troops currently serving in Sudan and Somalia, among others,” she recalled.

The  Guest  Speaker  at the lecture session,  Defence Minister Retired Major  Alfred  Palo  Conteh,  said  the  aim  of  the lecture  was  to  update  participants  on  Sierra  Leone’s  involvement  in  peace  keeping operations with  a  view  to  making  recommendations, keeping in mind the fact that the maintenance  of international peace and security is a collective  responsibility, pointing out  that  the  United  Nations  was  established  to bring hope for  peaceful co-existence  amongst  nations.

He further noted  that  differences  among  nations  particularly  the  five  permanent  member  states  of the United Nations had widened  and  the  world  ushered  in  an era  of  a  cold  war. He also stated that new conflicts have emerged  as  a result  of  the  polarization  of  nations  that  characterized  the  cold  war, observing that many  of these conflicts could  not be  resolved  by  peaceful  means  but needed to be stopped so that they do not  degenerate  into broader violence  and  destruction.

The Minister outlined  a  range  of peacekeeping activities  undertaken  by  the  United Nations to maintain  international peace and security, noting that peacekeeping  is  a flexible  exercise. He stressed that over the past two decades peacekeeping has been successfully employed in many situations around the world.

He disclosed that currently there are seventeen UN peace keeping operations deployed on the four continents of Africa, America, Asia and Europe. These, he went on, are deployed generally to act as neutral buffers between conflicting parties.

Citing Africa generally, the Guest Speaker said many peace keeping missions have been  deployed to resolve civil conflicts emanating from ethnic or religious tensions, extreme  poverty, uneven distribution of natural resources and mal-administration by Governments  which  are often more difficult  to resolve than conflicts between states.

He highlighted some of the challenges involved in peacekeeping, among them being funding. He said he was however very optimistic about prospects for Sierra Leone’s involvement in international peacekeeping, which he said were very high.