Course participants outside the United Nations Training School, Curragh Camp.
In November, Blue Shield International led the fourth iteration of the Cultural Property Protection Course with the United Nations Training School Ireland, Curragh Camp, Ireland. Running from 17 to 21 November 2025, the five-day course aimed to equip the 23 participants with the understanding and practical tools necessary to effectively deal with heritage issues during UN peacekeeping operations and in the course of their wider military duties.
The course was also run in conjunction with the Irish Defence Forces, with participants including military personnel, academics and civilian heritage practitioners from Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands. Professor Nigel Pollard of Swansea University led the course, with representatives from the Irish Defence Forces, Blue Shield Ireland, and the Lebanese Armed Forces also contributing to a combination of in-person and virtual training throughout the week.
The course has taken place each year since 2022, and is just one strand of BSI’s strong and growing relationship with UN peacekeepers. BSI has had a decade-long partnership with UNIFIL (the UN Interim Force in Lebanon), with whom a Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 2020, and to which many current and previous course participants have been attached on deployment.
The training week helps prepare for these deployments by introducing the concept of heritage protection and highlighting its relevance and importance to mission success, a point which is demonstrated through presentations of real-world examples by CPP specialists within different international militaries. Group activities and exercises help participants to put this theory into practice, with the final two days of the course dedicated to a large-scale simulation on site at archives, museums and heritage sites across Dublin.
Participants attend a briefing at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin as part of their field exercise.
With little to no heritage-specific focus in the mandatory training of many armed forces, these optional courses are an important boost to the overall capabilities of peacekeeping missions, helping to bring heritage considerations further to the fore in the planning and implementation of operations.
For me as an instructor, this course is always an interesting and enjoyable one because of the depth and range of experience among the participants. It means that as well as imparting my own knowledge of the subject and the experience of the wider Blue Shield Movement, we learn from the students and can carry that knowledge through to future teaching opportunities. The contribution of Blue Shield Ireland to the course is also of immense value. In all, the course emphasises the commitment of the Irish Defence Forces to discharge its legal and ethical obligations to safeguard cultural property under the terms of the 1954 Hague Convention and its Protocols.
The course is set to run again in 2026.
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