Education and Training Center/International

Training Rwandan Peacekeepers for UNAMID in Darfur

February 4-6, 2008

Institute senior trainers Ted Feifer and Keith Bowen just completed a 3-day workshop preparing 47 Rwandan military officers for forthcoming Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) deployments with the United Nations/African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID). The training was conducted in partnership with the Department of State's African Contingency Operations and Training Assistance Program (ACOTA). The workshop was held February 4-6, 2008 at the RDF training base at Gako, one hour's drive south of Kigali.

The participants included commanding and other officers assigned to the next two RDF infantry battalions being deployed to Darfur, as well as the deputy base commander and other cadre from the Gako training center. The workshop involved three days of communication and negotiation training for peacekeepers, consisting of presentations, exercises and simulations. Participants took part in role-plays involving meetings with leaders in internally displaced persons camps, analytical and operational problem solving, cross-cultural communication, the use of interpreters, and a final complex, multiparty crisis simulation with a Darfur-like scenario.

Participants found the workshop extremely useful additional preparation for their mission in Darfur. End of workshop evaluations highlighted the negotiation skills learned and exercised in scenarios likely to face participants during their peacekeeping mission. As one participant noted, the workshop was quite useful because it provided additional approaches to dealing with problems in the conflict, how to deal with different cultures, and how to handle an escalation of violence.