Monday, 3 August 2009, New York, The top military officers from most of the UN’s peacekeeping missions are in New York today to take part in a special forum – the annual Heads of Military Component Conference. This year’s conference, organized by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations’ (DPKO) Office of Military Affairs and held 3-7 August, is the seventh of its kind.

It brings the top military officers of the UN’s peacekeeping missions to UN Headquarters with the aim of providing an opportunity for these officers to share experiences and challenges, not only with each other, but also with senior managers and staff from UN headquarters.

“The conference will continue to ensure an active discussion on the doctrinal, operational and procedural perspectives of peacekeeping operations in general and on how these perspectives relate to current operations in particular,” said DPKO’s Military Advisor, Lieutenant General Chikadibia Isaac Obiakor, in his welcoming remarks at the conference.

Peacekeeping today is larger and wider in scale and complexity than in the past, with more than 120 countries currently contributing military and police personnel to 17 DPKO-directed and -supported peacekeeping missions, totaling approximately 115,000 men and women in the service for peace.

Speaking at Monday’s opening of the conference, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Alain Le Roy, said that the challenges that peacekeeping faces are numerous and increasing with continued demand for complex and often large, multi-dimensional UN missions, expanded mandates and tasks, and high international as well as local expectations.

“We are doing all this and more in a global environment where military resources are under strain worldwide, and in the midst of a profound economic recession,” Le Roy said. “To achieve positive results we need to be innovative and strategic. While we achieved some important milestones over the year, the need to reinforce our institutional capacity to meet the complex demands of today remains our utmost concern.”

Each year’s conference has a programme of work built around a set of thematic issues. This year’s conference centres on subjects such as robust peacekeeping and the New Horizon project . The latter provides an opportunity for DPKO and the Department of Field Support to identify, together with the Security Council, contributing countries and regional and other partners, some of the most critical challenges facing modern UN peacekeeping and to help chart an agenda for its future strengthening.

The heads of the military components of the following peacekeeping missions are attending the conference: MINURSO , MINURCAT , MONUC, UNDOF, UNFICYP, UNIFIL, UNMIK, UNMOGIP, UNOMIG, UNMIT, UNTSO, UNMIL, BINUB, UNMIS, and UNAMID – Source: DPKO Iseek News.