On 11-13 September, the NATO Building Integrity (BI) Programme and US Department of Defence conducted the Biannual Conferenc…more
On 11-13 September, the NATO Building Integrity (BI) Programme and US Department of Defence conducted the Biannual Conference “Projecting Stability through Good Governance and Institutional Building” in Washington DC.
The conference marked the 10th anniversary of the NATO BI Programme and attracted more than
185 participants from NATO and partner nations, representatives of NGOs, International Organisations, Subject Matter Experts as well as staff from NATO HQ, Commands and Agencies. This Conference served as a forum for exploring new ideas aimed at mainstreaming BI into NATO’s core tasks, and enhancing BI’s contribution to Projecting Stability.
Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy, Ambassador Alvargonzalez highlighted the importance that NATO and NATO Allies attach to this topic. “NATO is an Alliance of values, human rights, democracy, etc. These values are important for NATO, our collaboration on these issues makes NATO stronger” he said, underlining that “Building Integrity means building defence institutions on the foundations of transparency, accountability and integrity, adding that the BI Programme is a great example of NATO’s efforts to strengthen good governance”.
In his address, Acting US Assistant Deputy Secretary of Defence for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities, Todd Harvey, reassured the conference participants that “the United States is committed to working to bring BI into the three core tasks of the Alliance: crisis management, collective defence, and cooperative security” Affirming that counter-corruption is a top priority for Secretary Mattis. Mr Harvey stressed that “Probity at all levels of oversight and management is a vital precursor for long-term stability and security, both at home and abroad”.
Civilian and military participants agreed that from a strategic and practical point of view, this topic is of crucial importance for global peace and stability. Participants also stressed the importance of having a strategic common approach to understanding of corruption as a security risk and proposed concrete steps and initiatives to strengthen transparency, accountability and integrity in the defence and related security sector.
In his key note speech, Commander of NATO’s Supreme Allied Transformation, Gen. Denis Mercier, addressed the complexity of the security environment as the new norm stressing that “It is impossible to tackle security problems as a single country or entity, it is collaboration forums like the BI Conference that help us overcome them” .
European Union representative, Ambassador Maciej, Popowski, Deputy Director General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, European Commission, stressed that “in capacity building you never walk alone, you always do it with others and that is why I am happy to have NATO with us as the security partner of choice”. He confirmed that the EU has taken the decision to make a financial contribution of 2 million euro to NATO BI.
Commenting on the outcomes of the 2017 BI Conference and the future of BI, Ms. Susan Pond said “We have made significant progress since BI was launched at NATO HQ in 2007. The decisions to develop a NATO BI Policy and to recognise BI as a NATO education and training discipline provide the strategic framework to ensure sustainability. BI is part of NATO’s DNA. Looking to the future, I am also grateful for the offers from nations to host future BI events and for the financial contributions from Luxembourg and the EU to support BI 2018-2020”.