A total of 28 military, police and civilian personnel from seven Eastern Africa Standby Force (EASF) member states on Friday, September 25, completed a training course designed for Integration Mission Planning.

The training was taking place at the Rwanda Peace Academy in Musanze District and it drew participants from Comoros, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

Col (Rtd) Jill Rutaremara, the Director of the Rwanda Peace Academy, who officiated at the closing ceremony of the training said that integrated mission planning is a logical necessity of the nature of contemporary peace support operations.

"The complex nature of contemporary operating environment, the diverse and complex PSO (peace support operations) mandates, the multi-dimensional nature of peace missions, as well as the multiplicity and complexity of actors and stakeholders demand that mission planning be integrated,” he noted.

Rutaremera highlighted that failures in proper planning or implementation of poor mission plans can produce disastrous and costly consequences including loss of life and suffering of innocent people including peacekeepers themselves.

"Correct evaluation of the operating environment including the threat environment is therefore important,” he insisted.

Participants were trained to understand the role of the EASF, mission planning and integration in a multinational and multi-disciplinary environment in order to enable them to participate fully as Staff Officers in future EASF deployments.

The two-week course was organized in joint partnership between the governments of Rwanda, the United Kingdom (UK) and Denmark.

The Eastern Africa Standby Force representative, Lt Col Jean-Bosco Bahizi said the preparation of staff through training is one of the key tenets of preparing Officers to be able to undertake any mandated PSO Mission.

"During the past two weeks, no doubt you have worked hard to achieve the objectives of the course,” he said.