The memorial ceremony will be led by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in New York, the United States, on Friday, during which he will also posthumously award Dag Hammarskjöld medals to 119 military, police and civilian peacekeepers who died between 2018 and early 2019.

Indonesian peacekeeper Chief Pvt. Nasri Basri, who served the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), would be among those to receive a medal.

Nasri died in a road accident in Al Geneina, Darfur, Sudan, in July last year after he lost control of the truck he was driving due to difficult desert terrain and bad weather. It was the first fatality involving Indonesian troops in the past five years.

“[On Friday,] we honor the more than 1 million men and women who have served as UN peacekeepers since our first mission in 1948,” Guterres said in a press release. “We remember the more than 3,800 personnel who paid the ultimate price.

“And we express our deepest gratitude to the 100,000 civilian, police and military peacekeepers deployed around the world today and to the countries that contribute these brave and dedicated women and men.”

Guterres will also posthumously award the Captain Mbaye Diagne medal to Pvt. Chancy Chitete of Malawi for his exceptional courage while serving the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).

Chitete was killed last year while saving the life of a fellow peacekeeper from Tanzania who had been badly wounded during an operation to combat the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an armed force that had been attacking local towns and disrupting the UN’s Ebola response.

“His comrade survived and Chitete’s heroism and sacrifice helped the peacekeepers achieve their objective of protecting civilians and forcing the ADF to withdraw from the area. It is planned that Chitete’s family will receive the medal on his behalf during the Peacekeepers’ Day commemorations in New York,” the UN statement said.

The medal was named after the late Senegalese peacekeeper Captain Diagne, who saved hundreds of lives in Rwanda in 1994, before being killed. Chitete would be the first UN peacekeeper to receive the award after the inaugural medal was presented to Diagne’s family in his honor in 2016.

According to UN data, a total of 3,802 peacekeepers have died in the line of duty since 1948. Of this figure, 38 were Indonesians.

Indonesia is the eighth-largest contributor to UN peacekeeping missions out of 124 sending countries, with 3,080 personnel currently deployed on eight UN peacekeeping missions around the world.

Indonesia has been pursuing efforts to improve the safety of UN peacekeeping during its one-month long rotating presidency at the UN Security Council (UNSC) this month. The country will also host on Thursday a debate on the protection of civilians in armed conflicts at the UNSC.

“The topic actually emerged during a number of discussions over the past 20 years. But there has been no collective decision yet because of opposition from some countries,” said Febrian Ruddyard, the Foreign Ministry’s director general for multilateral cooperation, without revealing which countries opposed the idea.

Indonesia has also invited International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) president Peter Maurer and representatives from some civil society organizations to speak at the Thursday’s meeting, according to Dian Triansyah Djani, the Indonesian permanent representative to the UN.

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