Local Editor
Patrick Cammaert is a retired Dutch general who was serving as the United Nations Force Commander for the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
He was previously the Military Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Prior to that position, he was the Force Commander of the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), as the Military Adviser in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and has spent a career in the Royal Netherlands Marines specializing in peacekeeping operations.
Cammaert is notable for having implemented many of the recommendations of the Brahimi Report.
On October 10, 2008 Cammaert received the Carnegie Wateler Peace Prize for his commitment to world peace.
He is the head of a United Nations mission tasked with monitoring a fragile ceasefire in Yemen's strategic port city of Hodeida.
Cammaert's team will secure the functioning of Hodeida port, a key gateway for aid and food imports in the impoverished nation, as well as supervise the withdrawal of fighters from the flashpoint city.
The ceasefire in Hodeida, between Saudi-backed resigned regime forces and Yemen’s popular Houthi revolutionaries, is seen as the first significant breakthrough in peace efforts since the war erupted in 2014.
The agreement was brokered at talks in Rimbo, some 60km north of the Swedish capital Stockholm, where a number of other confidence-building steps were agreed to boost confidence between the warring sides.
This includes a planned prisoner swap involving some 16,000 detainees.
Source: Yemenwatch.net
