International Day of UN Peacekeepers commemorated in Bangladesh

In commemoration of International Day of UN Peacekeepers, Bangladesh Armed Forces Division (AFD) and Office of the UN Resident Coordinator with the support of Ministry of Foreign Affairs jointly organized a number of events to honour the fallen and injured peacekeepers on 29 May 2017. Mr. Abdul Hamid, Honourable President of Bangladesh spoke on the occasion as chief guest at Bangabandhu International Conference Center (BICC) and handed over crests to the injured peacekeepers, and family members of deceased peacekeepers who lost their lives for the cause of world peace and humanity. The UN Resident Coordinator in Bangladesh Robert Watkins delivered a speech on the occasion highlighting the importance of peace missions and contribution of Bangladeshi peacekeepers. State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam, MP spoke as special guest. Chiefs of three services, chief of Police and senior military officials were present in the event. More than 1500 participants including Armed Forces, Police and civil officials, ministers, MPs, academicians, civil society members, UN officials, diplomats and senoir students were present in the event. A Peace Run was also organized in the morning with the participation of armed forces, MoFA and UN officials where Hon’ble State Minister for Foreign Minister was chief guest and UN Resident Coordinator spoke as special guest. TV talk-shows were organized by BTV where UNIC NIO took part as one of panelists.Nine national dailies have published special supplement pages where messages of UNSG and UNRC in Bangla and English (full text) were also included. UNIC NIO was focal point from UN system in the preparatory meetings for all the events with Armed Forces Division. UNSG and UNRC’s Message (full text) both English and Bangla were published in nine newspapers. A UN video received from HQ also screened in President’s function.