New Delhi: The Minister of State for Defence Dr. Subhash Bhamre will represent the Government of India at the ‘UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial Meeting: London 2016’ on 08 September 2016. This will be the first international meeting, which Dr. Bhamre will be attending after taking over as the Minister of State for Defence. The Minister will speak at the plenary sessions, which will be attended by representatives of more than 100 countries. The sessions would take up issues on Women, Peace and Security, Pre and Post Deployment, Tackling Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) and Improving Peacekeeping – Rapid Deployment. During the visit, Dr. Bhamre will also have bilateral meeting with UK Minister of State for Defence Production, Mr. Harriett Baldwin.
The main focus of the meeting will be operationalising the pledges made at the Leaders’ Summit held in September last year on UN Peacekeeping. This would be through better training, force generation, pre-deployment processes, doctrine, equipment, leadership, performance on the ground, lessons learned mechanisms and rapid response capability for improving peacekeeping.
The other areas to be emphasised will be to review progress on the implementation of last September’s pledges, commitments made since, and the UN’s current and emerging requirements. It will also include developing a coherent, shared plan for how peacekeeping can play its part in implementing the Women, Peace and Security agenda by increasing participation of women in peacekeeping and to mainstream gender perspectives into all peacekeeping missions.
It may be noted that on 28 September 2015, the UN Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-moon and US President Mr. Barack Obama joined nearly 50 Heads of State and Government from around the world to announce significant new contributions to UN Peacekeeping. This unprecedented commitment of resources has to be matched with the political will to deliver on these pledges and address the systemic challenges facing UN military deployments.
