the Role of the Police in UNAMID

The report assesses the UNAMID Police component, consisting of formed police units (FPUs), individual police officers (IPOs), and senior leadership. It highlights the mission's struggle to implement its protection of civilians (PoC) mandate due to severe obstructions by the Sudanese government, budgetary constraints, and personnel shortages. Key findings include the success of new tailored recruitment and performance management systems, but significant gaps in pre-deployment training and gender mainstreaming. The document recommends improved communication of the mission's mandate to internally displaced persons (IDPs) and enhanced training for language assistants and government police.

• UNAMID Police operates under a non-executive mandate, meaning it lacks the power to arrest, detain, or investigate crimes independently, unlike executive missions in Kosovo or East Timor.
• The Sudanese government has created unprecedented obstacles for UNAMID, including bureaucratic delays in deploying personnel and materiel, and denying patrols access to conflict zones, which hinders the mission's ability to verify and report incidents.
• The police component is divided into three elements: Formed Police Units (FPUs) provide armed escorts and crowd management; Individual Police Officers (IPOs) focus on monitoring, mentoring local police, and supporting community policing volunteers (CPVs); and core command provides oversight.
• There is a significant gap in personnel preparation, with 70% of IPOs not receiving mandatory pre-deployment training in their home countries, leading to inadequate skill sets and reliance on in-service training.
• UNAMID Police leadership has improved personnel quality by replacing generic UN recruitment with a tailored system that identifies specific operational skill sets and uses a selection committee and interviews.
• Internally displaced persons (IDPs) often hold unrealistic expectations of the police component, mistakenly viewing it as a development actor capable of providing jobs and livelihood training.
• Gender mainstreaming is hindered by a lack of female police advisers from Arabic-speaking countries and a general lack of gender-related training for officers prior to deployment.
• The mission's protection of civilians (PoC) efforts are limited primarily to IDPs in camps, leaving the vast majority of civilians in Darfur without extended protection.
• Training for government police and CPVs is hampered by a lack of funding for basic needs, such as refreshments for trainees, and a lack of specialized training for language assistants.
• The police component has successfully established a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Sudanese government police Directorate of International Cooperation to facilitate capacity building and community policing.

APA

Institute for Security Studies (2015). the Role of the Police in UNAMID. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Mono190.pdf

Chicago

Institute for Security Studies. the Role of the Police in UNAMID. 2015. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Mono190.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Institute for Security Studies |title=the Role of the Police in UNAMID |date=2015 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Mono190.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{instituteforsecuritystudies2015role, author = {{Institute for Security Studies}}, title = {{the Role of the Police in UNAMID}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2015}, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/Mono190.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }