
Minister Counsellor Nguyen Hoang Nguyen, deputy head of thePermanent Delegation of Vietnam to the UN, delivered a speech at the openinggeneral debate of the annual session of the Special Committee on PeacekeepingOperations (also known as the C34) on February 21.
The sending of personnel to UN peacekeeping operations since2014 is an important landmark in Vietnam’s foreign policy, he emphasised,highlighting the willingness to keep expanding the scale and scope of personneldeployment.
Priority will continue to be given to promoting women’sparticipation in those operations so as to increase the rate of female officersand soldiers to 15% at the deployed units and 20% of the deployed individuals.
Nguyen called on the UN to take timely measures to improvethe capacity to ensure security and safety for peacekeeping forces. In particular,it should prioritise resources for pre-deployment training programmes and thesupplementation of essential medical supplies to peacekeeping missions.

The debate, held at the UN headquarters in New York, wasattended by President of the 77th UN General Assembly Csaba Korosi, representatives of memberstates, including 125 countries sending military and police personnel to UNpeacekeeping operations, and many international and regional organisations.
Participants discussed emerging challenges to peacekeepingoperations – an essential tool of the UN for maintaining international peaceand security.
More than 76,000 troops are performing UN peacekeeping tasksat 12 missions in four regions, mostly in Africa. Since 2014, Vietnam has sentmore than 520 military and police officers and soldiers to the UN missions inthe Central African Republic, South Sudan and the Abyei Area, and to the UNheadquarters./.