ISLAMABAD: Six peacekeepers from Pakistan will be honoured posthumously with ‘Dag Hammarskjold Medal’ at a ceremony at UN headquarters on May 26 in observance of the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers.

According to a United Nations announcement, the Pakistani peacekeepers to be honoured are: Tahir Ikram (police), Adil Jan (police) and Muhammad Nil Naeem (military) who all served with UNAMID in Darfur; Tahir Mehmood (military), deployed with the UN Stabilisation Mission in Congo (MONUSCO); Muhammad Shafeeq (military) from the UN Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA); and Abrar Sayed who served in a civilian capacity with MINURSO.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will lay a wreath to honour the nearly 4,200 UN peacekeepers who have lost their lives since 1948 and will preside over a ceremony at which the ‘Dag Hammarskjold Medal’ will be awarded posthumously to 117 military, police and civilian peacekeepers, who lost their lives serving under the UN flag last year.

Pakistan is the fifth largest contributor of uniformed personnel to UN Peacekee­ping. It currently deploys more than 4,100 military and police personnel to the UN operations in Abyei, the Central African Republic, Cyprus, Congo, and Mali, South Sudan and Western Sahara.

The International Day of UN Peacekeepers was established by the UN General Assembly in 2002 to pay tribute to all men and women serving in peacekeeping, and to honour the memory of those who have lost their lives in the cause of peace.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2022