Prospective police officers from across the Pacific have been welcomed into training at Magandjin / Brisbane's state-of-the-art Pinkeba headquarters on the way to becoming United Nations peacekeepers.
The Pacific Policing Initiative program has continued for a second year after being successfully rolled out for the first time in 2025.
The new intake involves 50 men and women - about half of the inaugural class last year - from Fiji, Kiribati, Naoero/Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to be trained as mission-ready UN police peacekeepers over the next five weeks.
The Australian Federal Police initiative, which includes four members of the AFP conducting the education, has specifically been tailored for the Pacific where subjects include not only the principles of UN peacekeeping, but also child protection, sexual exploitation and abuse, intelligence-led policing and reporting, human-rights due diligence policy, and police command amid a UN context.
The AFP developed the UN Police Peacekeeping residential program - hailed as a model for future sustainability - in conjunction with the UN and at the specific request of Pacific police chiefs, who have been vocal in their desire for a Pacific-led UN peacekeeping capability.
AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett told this month's UN Chief of Police summit in New York City the course would offer a new "fit-for-purpose" training model that would be faster, far more agile and more specialised than any of its past legacy programs.
Commissioner Barrett, who launched the training course on Monday along with UN police adviser Faisal Shahkar, said she was grateful as a 23-year-old rookie to be deployed in Solomon Islands in 2003 and it had given her a feel for Pacific policing needs.
"It helped shape the commissioner I am today - and it is also guiding how I believe we can improve the fundamentals of UN police peacekeeping missions," she said.
Following a 73 per cent pass rate and with more than 40 per cent female representation last year, the first AFP-delivered, UN police peacekeeping course is said to have answered Pacific ambitions to the point of graduates are even being deployed to severe trouble spots in sub-Saharan South Sudan.
It has also laid the foundations for an ongoing training program that will include a third course in early 2027, with a separate program focused on the training and certification of Pacific trainers that is additionally scheduled for later this year.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, who warmly welcomed trainees, said that Australia's commitment demonstrated not only strong support for UN peace operations, but also confidence in the vital role police played in maintaining international peace and security.
"Today's United Nations Police are increasingly called upon to operate in many highly complex environments marked by transnational organised crime, terrorism, environmental crime, cyber-enabled threats, community violence and fragile political transitions," he said.
"At the same time, missions are expected to deliver more agile, specialised and integrated responses while operating with finite resources.
"This changing landscape requires police officers, who possess not only technical competence, but also sound judgement, integrity, adaptability and leadership."
The officers in training will live at Pinkenba alongside Pacific Police Support Group members, who are a multinational deployment cohort that is designed to support major events and crisis response throughout the Pacific region.
The Pacific Police Support Group will be deployed at the end of the month to support the 55th Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting held in the Republic of Palau.
About 6,000 worldwide UN police officers from 94 countries help foster international peace and security by supporting countries and their territories in conflict, post-conflict and crisis situations.
Officers reinforce and re-establish security through community-oriented policing patrols where they advise and assist domestic police services to increase compliance within the international human-rights standards to restore and to promote public safety and the rule of law.
