Every day, thousands of children are faced with armed conflicts, natural disasters and other emergency situations that perturb their protection system. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been tasked with training police officers deployed abroad to support national security forces in their peace consolidation efforts.

Yesterday, the IBCR facilitated a one-day course in Ottawa with 22 Canadian policers officers about to be deployed to peacekeeping missions in Haiti, Iraq, Mali, the occupied Palestinian territories and Ukraine. The course introduced the participants to child protection, more specifically to relevant international laws and standards they will be to promote and adhere to, the child protection coordination mechanisms, and the monitoring and reporting mechanism on the six grave violations of children’s rights in armed conflict. The collaboration with the RCMP continues since 2017, while more Canadian police personnel are deployed to mentor and build capacities of national police services in bilateral and multilateral missions around the world.