Constituent Mitigations
1.3 Pre-deployment training and preparation
Despite being increasingly recognised as a strategic-level threat to international interventions, corruption does not yet seem to be widely incorporated in either mission planning, monitoring, or training for troops. According to the findings of the Government Defence Anti-Corruption Index, a worldwide survey of defence governance and anti-corruption procedures, only 4 NATO states (out of 22 surveyed) have included corruption issues in their military doctrine, and 3 member and partner states conduct systematic anti-corruption training as part of pre-deployment preparation. Among the top 25 troop contributors to UN missions, 5 face critical corruption risks in their forces at home and none conduct anti-corruption training or monitoring for UN deployments.
Preparing troops for deployment into fragile and conflict-affected environments, where they are likely to encounter corrupt networks and opportunities to engage in corruption themselves, requires at the very least:
- Leadership training: ensuring senior officers understand the threat that corruption poses and can guide and oversee implementation of mitigation measures;
- Context-specific, pre-deployment training analysing corruption risks in the mission and the host nation, and familiarising troops with mitigation measures and reporting channels they could use;
- Tailored operational training and guidance for personnel working on operational sustainment, especially where the influx of resources is significant.
- Training for specialists such as engineers, who are likely to have a role in overseeing projects and therefore a chance to identify red flags that could suggest existence of corruption;
- Training for officers responsible for civil-military interaction, in particular those who will come into contact with local populations and will be in a position to observe corrupt practices or receive signals from whistleblowers.
- Training for public affairs officers, to help formulate potential responses to corruption, both public and in key leader engagements.
Key Personnel
- J7
- J1
- J4
- J8
- J9