Theme: Operations

Military forces around the world pride themselves on being highly trained, and having strong values like integrity and selflessness embedded in all their instruction. Corruption as an issue can seem marginal, as something for civilians to think about. Developing the capacity of defence ministries and military forces to recognise and react to this problem requires training. Such training has not been available up until recently. But, in the last few years, TI-DSP, in collaboration with NATO and other partners, has developed a course to address the military and defence aspects of corruption. The purpose of this study is to follow up on the impact of this course, and see whether it was lasting and had resulted in changes in attitudes and behaviour.

In 2008 and 2009, our team developed a five-day course tailored education course that teaches officers and defence officials how corruption can be tackled and prevented, in collaboration with NATO’s ‘Building Integrity’ (BI) initiative. The course builds up knowledge on the concept of corruption, how it manifests itself in the defence and security sector, how it can be prevented and how to build institutional integrity. It also builds confidence among participants that such an objective is worthwhile and achievable. The feedback shows that, overall, the course is highly relevant to Afghan participants and it demonstrated a tangible impact by allowing many alumni to think in new ways about corruption and improve their own work.

Analytical review based on content analysis of information sources.