Press Releases

ACOTA Strategy Conference

December 11, 2006

On December 11, 2006 U.S. Ambassador, Michael L. Retzer and the Deputy Minister of Defence and National Service, Honorable Omar Yusuf Mzee, will be kicking off a one week conference on peacekeeping with more than 20 senior officers from the Tanzania Peoples Defence Forces (TPDF). The conference will take place in Dar es Salaam and is sponsored by the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program – one of the U.S. government’s key military assistance programs in Africa.

The purpose of the conference is to create a training plan for the Tanzanian military as it embarks on an effort to develop its peacekeeping capacity. This action plan will set forth steps to initially train three Tanzanian battalions not only in traditional peacekeeping areas, such as logistics and communication, but also in areas such as human rights, interaction with civil society and international law. Equipping Tanzanian military forces with these peacekeeping skills, ACOTA aims to address the chronic problem facing the United Nations - a shortage of peacekeepers trained to keep the peace.

The TPDF has recently decided to deploy 75 military police to assist with peacekeeping operations in Lebanon. “This is an important moment in Tanzania’s history. We are impressed with President Jakaya Kikwete’s decision to deploy military police, and more broadly, with Tanzania signaling a readiness to play a role as a peacekeeping partner in Africa and beyond,” Ambassador Retzer emphasized at the opening of the conference.

To date, ACOTA has trained over 17,000 troops from ten African countries to participate in United Nations peacekeeping operations. Currently, the United Nations has over 50,000 peacekeeping forces deployed in Africa, in seven peacekeeping operations ranging from Cote D’Ivoire to the Democratic Republic of Congo. 22 African nations contribute peacekeeping forces to these operations.