Downsizing of Fiji’s missions
FIJIAN peacekeepers who served in the Golan Heights arrived on Friday night — marking one of the final tour of duties this year for infantry troops at the war-torn region.
Minister for Defence Inia Seruiratu said Fiji began downsizing its Golan Heights and Lebanon missions after changes made by the United Nations. “With the changes in the way the United Nations are approaching peacekeeping these changes dictate how the UN does its operations in fulfilling the different mandates,” he said.
“One of these changes is downsizing of the current missions.
“The reasons are the changes in scenarios like politics.
“Funding as well has an impact.
“Missions are based on funding and missions will be structured appropriately.”
He said changes made to Fiji’s peacekeeping duties in the Middle East began last year.
“For Fiji, we only have one mission left in Lebanon.
“In December last year we started returning our men and women from there.
“Of course the same is happening with Golan. We were downsizing in Golan.
“For that mission we still have the infantry component. The health and logistics component are being downsized.
“These are changes that happen every now and then especially to mandates.
“The UN peacekeeping mandates are reviewed every six months so that troop and infantry countries are given advice to either continue on that particular mission or to either downsize or pull out entirely.
“This is one of the major reasons Fiji has downsized their Golan Heights and Lebanon missions.”
More than 15,000 Fijians have served in conflict areas in Africa, Asia, Balkans and the Middle East in the past 40 years.
There are more than 400 Fijian peacekeepers serving in South Sudan, Darfur, Iraq, Golan Heights, South Lebanon and the Sinai.