Canada helps train African peacekeepers

Source: CBC news

Canada's deep commitment to peacekeeping is highlighted in a $15-million program, now in its third year, to train African peacekeepers.

Since the dramatic failure of the U.S.-led peacekeeping mission in Somalia in the early 1990s, where many peacekeepers were killed, Western militaries have shied away from the continent, handing over peacekeeping duties instead to their less experienced African counterparts. That has produced mixed results at best in places like Darfur and Somalia.

So Canada set up a program to send eight of its military officers, all peacekeeping veterans, to the Peace Support training facility outside the Kenyan capital Nairobi to put their African counterparts, from across the continent, through three-week training courses in peacekeeping basics.

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