Competency evaluation programme for prospective UN peacekeepers launched in Hanoi

Those in attendance at the event included representatives of the Ministry of National Defence, the embassies and military attachés of the ADMM-Plus countries in Vietnam, and the ASEAN Secretariat. They were joined by 18 delegations of the ADMM-Plus countries (Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, the US, Vietnam, and Japan).

Upon addressing the event, Sen. Lt. Gen. Phung Si Tan, deputy chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army, said the programme drew the participation of nearly 300 experts, trainees, and observers from ADMM-Plus members. It represents the last activity of the ADMM-Plus Experts’ Working Group on Peacekeeping Operations Cycle 4, which ran from 2021 to 2023, under the co-chairmanship of Vietnam and Japan.

This is the first time that the country has hosted such a large-scale multilateral activity on UN peacekeeping operations, thereby helping to affirm the country’s role, stature, and contributions to multilateral co-operation mechanisms on UN peacekeeping operations in the region and within the ADMM-Plus framework, he said.

Co-chairing the Experts’ Working Group on Peacekeeping Operations Cycle 4, Col. Nguyen Nhu Canh, deputy director of the Vietnam Department of Peacekeeping Operations under the Ministry of National Defence, and Matsuzawa Tomoko, director for Defence Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region at the Japanese Ministry of Defence and head of the Japanese experts’ working group, affirmed that the two sides have co-ordinated closely and obtained targets of the events they jointly organised, including the CEPPP.

The CEPPP closing ceremony is scheduled to take place on September 21.