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The commander of the Sri Lankan army has reiterated “strong army commitment” to peacekeeping missions at a seminar held at the Hotel Taj Samudra in Colombo today.
Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake told more than 40 foreign delegates at the 9th Asia-Pacific Peace-keeping Training Centre Commandants’ Conference (APPTCCC) that his government had a “strong commitment” to the “noble mission” of international peacekeeping.
“[The] Sri Lanka Army has been engaged in training peacekeepers since 2004 and to-date we have trained 28, 998 peacekeepers,” he added, stating that his government would “build stronger peacekeepers through training while acknowledging that global institutions and practices are the backbone of a robust mindset”.
Sri Lanka’s soldiers were implicated with rape and running child sex rings whilst serving as UN Peace Keeping forces in Haiti. In 2007 a group of Haitian children identified 134 peacekeepers from Sri Lanka in a child sex ring that lasted several years. Though repatriated none of the implicated soldiers were prosecuted in Sri Lanka.
See more from the Sri Lankan Army’s official website here.