Our Fellow @knowles_em finally had a piece she co-wrote on human rights training with foreign militaries published in @WarOnTheRocks - here are some highlights 1/8 https://warontherocks.com/2020/05/is-human-rights-training-working-with-foreign-militaries-no-one-knows-and-thats-o-k/

"The tactical, operational, and professional skills that take a soldier years to learn in a Western military are expected to be mastered by local forces in months." 2/8

"Too often, advisers end up training in a vacuum with few ways of knowing whether the troops that have sat through their courses on international humanitarian law are applying their knowledge on the battlefield." 3/8

"There are many documents that define and outline it as an attempt to help foreign security forces in a weak state become more competent, capable, sustainable... However... the design of these programs translates these aims to the military tactical level and then stops." 4/8

"[T]actical capacity alone will not build effective, accountable, and locally legitimate armed forces in fragile states." 5/8

"[T]he military contribution itself needs to span the tactical to the strategic level to be successful in these complex environments." 6/8

"[W]hen security forces are politicized, factionalized, and fragmented, international assistance needs to structure itself as a form of peacebuilding across fragmented security sectors and between militaries and the civilians they serve." 7/8

"Finding ways of documenting levels of local buy-in for training courses and identifying whether there is genuine local demand for human rights training is essential to
understanding whether the courses have any real chance of achieving lasting behavioral change." 8/8