T

he government is optimistic that it will reach its target deployment of 4,000 personnel to the United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKOs) mission by the year 2019.

According to the Foreign Ministry'€™s director of international security and disarmament Andy Rachmianto, by the end of the year Indonesia will have sent about 2,600 military, police and civilian personnel to work as UN peacekeepers.

'€œIn total, we have around 800,000 to 900,000 military and police personnel. Four thousand is not even 1 percent of that number, so we'€™re talking only about 0.5 percent. It'€™s definitely possible,'€ Andy said during a seminar on the commemoration of UN peacekeepers that was jointly coordinated by the UN Information Center (UNIC) and Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta on Monday.

In April, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono '€” who was himself a UN peacekeeper during the Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia conflict from 1995 to 1996 '€” said Indonesia would like to exceed its stated deployment goal of 4,000 personnel to join the UN peacekeeping forces.

Based on UN data, as of April 2014 Indonesia has sent a total of 1,797 military experts, troops and police personnel to eight different peacekeeping missions, ranking 18th out of the 122 countries contributing troops.

Andy added that prioritizing the deployment target of 4,000 was necessary given Indonesia'€™s constitutional mandate for peace-building, and as a means of creating goodwill among UN member states that could aid Indonesia'€™s efforts to secure a UN security council seat in 2019. The last time Indonesia was one of the 10 elected council members was in 2008.

Andy also said that sending more personnel would not place a burden on state funds because the UN reimburses part of the cost of deployment, which he said would benefit the defense industry.

Indonesia has been especially optimistic about reaching its target following the establishment of the International Peace and Security Center in Sentul, West Java, which is the largest training center for counterterrorism and UN peacekeeping in Southeast Asia. Andy said the establishment of the center had made Indonesia more confident in its peacekeeping capacities.

He added that a new team to manage UN peacekeeping missions, composed of several ministries, the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the National Police, was currently in the works.  

UNIC director Michele Zaccheo also said that the UN was convinced of Indonesia'€™s ability to send 4,000 personnel given its proven reputation of deploying highly trained and disciplined personnel to peacekeeping missions.

However, Zaccheo noted that he would like to see more female deployments.

'€œEspecially [more] women in uniform [should be deployed]; but also civilian personnel, because if we'€™re talking about women who have been victims of violence, they will likely better trust a woman peacekeeper, especially a civilian, than a male one,'€ he told The Jakarta Post.

Currently, 30 percent of the 118,000 UN peacekeepers are women. According to Andy, just 33 out of the 1,797 Indonesian UN peacekeepers already deployed are women.

Former UN peacekeeper Brig. Santy Rahmi said that her firsthand experiences in Sudan showed her the importance of female peacekeepers in gaining the trust of victims in conflict areas. (fss)