TY - JOUR AB - The participation in international peacekeeping operations to date represents one of Austria's most significant contributions to the maintenance of peace and security. Following the restoration of state sovereignty in 1955, the deployment of the armed forces' paramedics in the Congo (1960–1963) and from the civil perspective, the deployment of police contingents on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus (1964–1977) are considered the first official peace missions with Austrian participation. Both cases were missions of the United Nations, thus, 1964 counts as the beginning of the Austrian police's decades-long commitment to peace policy. However, its first experience took place earlier. From 1958, that is two years before the first federal army members marked the official restart of Austrian foreign commitments, officials of the Austrian police force were deployed in the UN Field Service. However, these provided their service not as Austrian security forces on the basis of an appropriate UN mandate, but rather acted by means of individually concluded UN service contracts and were on leave of absence from their domestic security service for the duration of their UN deployment. This article will enable an overview of this first foreign experience of the Austrian police, before official Austrian police contingents were deployed from 1964 on, which have participated in over 30 different missions worldwide since then. AU - Muigg, Mario DO - 10.7396/IE_2016_H ET - 9/2016 KW - peacekeeping peace mission international peace operations UN Police UN-Field Service civil-military cooperation LA - eng M1 - International Edition PY - 2016 SN - 1813-3495 SP - 81-95 ST - UN Field Service. The first foreign experience of the Austrian police T2 - SIAK-Journal − Journal for Police Science and Practice TI - UN Field Service. The first foreign experience of the Austrian police UR - http://www.bmi.gv.at/cms/BMI_SIAK/4/2/1/ie2016/files/Muigg_IE_2016.pdf VL - 6 ID - 563 ER -