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Madam President, I would like to thank Under-Secretary-General Ladsous, as well as Commissioners Hinds, Yiga and Carrilho for their briefings. Lithuania welcomes the adoption of the first stand-alone resolution on UN Police, which we were happy to co-sponsor. We also appreciate this first-ever opportunity for the Security Council to speak directly with the heads of UN police components. It should become a regular exercise.

With UN peacekeeping becoming increasingly multidimensional, the success of a mission more than ever depends not just on the military component, but also on the skilled police officers who are at the frontline of stopping community violence, supporting victims, holding criminals accountable and building national justice institutions.

A dedicated Council discussion on UN police was long overdue. The rapid growth of UN police personnel that started with deployments in former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s has continued ever since. The numbers of UN Police have increased two-fold in the last 15 years and now account to over 12 percent of UN uniformed personnel. UN police is deployed in 12 out of 16 UN peacekeeping missions.

Only a few years after joining the UN, Lithuania started deploying police officers to missions in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. We continue contributing to the UN police through officers now serving in Haiti, Liberia and Cyprus. Lithuania’s policemen are also present in European Union and OSCE missions in Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Let me briefly focus on two topics selected for today’s discussion: protection of civilians and importance of police training.

Protection of civilians by the police components is often at the front and centre of UN police deployments. While military components intervene to protect civilians under imminent threat, UN police provides a key contribution through patrolling in areas of increased risk, public order management, facilitating delivery of humanitarian assistance, and ensuring security in refugee and IDP camps.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Liberia, where challenges faced by UNMIL police officers and Liberian national police in fighting the Ebola outbreak are enormous and deserve our respect and admiration. At the same time, the outbreak exposed persisting weaknesses of the Liberian police force, such as insufficient skills and mobility, corruption and a lack of accountability. These shortcoming will need to be addressed by the international community once the crisis is behind us.

In South Sudan, what started as a political crisis is now a humanitarian catastrophe with deep ethnic divides. The UNMISS police component is struggling to cope with its tasks in overcrowded IDP camps amid rampant crime, increasing tensions along the ethnic lines and ever growing sexual violence. To ensure successful implementation of the realigned mandate the mission should provide its personnel with mediation and community engagement skills. Additional deployments of women police officers would be essential to improve child protection and address sexual violence in IDP camps.

In the Central African Republic, UN police will be instrumental in restoring law and order and stopping violent crime and looting. Yet the MINUSCA police officers should not be given a task that extends beyond their capabilities. A more robust UN military presence is needed to confront the heavily armed militias responsible for violations of ceasefire and attacks against civilians.

Protection against sexual and gender-based violence remains a key priority in implementing protection of civilians mandates. UN police is again expected to be at the forefront of effective response. In this regard we welcome proactive approaches, such as deployment of a specialized UN police team in MINUSTAH to support national police in preventing and investigating cases of sexual and gender based violence, as well as outreach to sexual violence survivors by female UN police officers in Liberia and Darfur.

Furthermore, women police officers not just serve and protect, but also inspire local girls and women to stand for their own rights and to become active participants in their country’s future. They serve as role models and encourage women to join national law and order and justice institutions, thus enabling them to contribute to the security of their communities long after the UN is gone.

Madam President,

Ensuring proper UN police training is both a challenge and an essential element of each mission. Officers often come from diverse national police forces with different perceptions about the police role in the community. In addition to unfamiliar location, they face more hostile environments, poor infrastructure and difficulties dealing with the host state police authorities. The UN and the contributing countries should do their utmost to ensure that the entire police component is prepared to act as a single team united by the mission’s mandate.

Just as the objectives of UN missions should be closely adapted to the situation of each host state, so should the training. While conducting actual police work might be necessary in countries where national law enforcement structures are very weak or absent, it can only be an interim measure. UN police officers must be capable and willing to pass on their experience, with a view to rebuilding host state’s capabilities and handing over the policing to the national authorities functioning within the framework of rule of law and democratic civilian oversight.

Police components, including mission leadership, must receive relevant pre-deployment training, in particular on the protection of civilians, human rights, women and child protection, as well as addressing sexual and gender based violence. In this regard, we welcome the adoption of the DPKO/DFS guidelines of UN police implementing protection of civilians mandates.

Finally, the UN police must ensure it remains close to the communities it serves. Speaking the local language is often indispensable for an effective implementation of community policing and training of national police authorities. We welcome the partnership of the International Organisation of la Francophonie and the Police Division aimed at increasing the number of francophone police officers.