By Ma Yichong

KHARTOUM, Aug. 4 -- A total of 225 members of the 15th Chinese peacekeeping engineering contingent to Darfur was awarded the UN Peace Medals of Honor and was commended by the UN and the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) on July 30, 2020.

Li Meng, commander of the engineering contingent, read the order of commendation issued by Lieutenant General Leonard Muriuki Ngondi of Kenya, Force Commander for UNAMID, at the ceremony held in UNAMID’s super camp in El Fasher.

According to Li Meng, during the 20-month peacekeeping mission, the peacekeeping engineers have successively completed the infrastructure construction of the UNAMID’s temporary operating base in Golo, the clearing, rectification and transfer of 10 peacekeeping camps, the upgrade of the El Fasher super camp, as well as other construction support tasks. In particular, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the mission area, the contingent has strictly organized construction support tasks under normalized pandemic prevention and control to ensure their ability to perform various tasks at any time, which has been unanimously recognized by UNAMID. To this end, the chief of staff, the minister of supply chain management, and the chief of the engineering division of UNAMID respectively issued the commendation orders to each Chinese peacekeeper.

China began to dispatch peacekeeping engineering contingent to Darfur, Sudan to perform missions since 2007. At present, the contingent is mainly responsible for road construction, camp fortification construction, and maintenance of airport aprons.