NATO and Serbia boost cooperation on defence education
On 25 February 2020, Major General Ilija Todorov, Deputy Commandant of the Serbian Joint Forces Command, opened the 4th Multinational Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO) Workshop in Belgrade. The event was hosted by the Republic of Serbia, under the title “Focusing on NCO Professional Military Education (PME) as a tool for development of the NCO corps for the XXI Century.” It was was co-organised by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme (DEEP) and the Partnership for Peace Consortium.
From 25 to 27 February 2020, NATO’s DEEP Programme brought together 23 national delegations representing their NCO academies and 12 NATO components and multinational institutions at the Guard House at Topčider Park in Belgrade. Participants from NATO Allies and partner countries presented their respective programmes for the formation of Non Commissioned Officers. The workshop aimed at discussing how the presented PME programmes are aligned with the NATO NCO PME Reference Curriculum, as well as how DEEP Programme can be employed for the future initiatives in this domain.
NATO’s DEEP Programme helps partners to build, develop and reform military educational institutions. Across 16 partner nations, it helps to identify needs and gaps of defence and military education institutions through cooperation, dialogue and consultation between institutions and experts. The Serbian Armed Forces have been implementing a number of activities under the DEEP Programme since 2013. This helped to improve the existing capacities for the training of NCOs. The previous three iterations of the NCO professionalization workshop were hosted by Georgia from 2016 to 2019, focusing on NCO education and challenges of the 21st century to the armed forces. Ukraine has expressed interest to host the 5th Multinational NCO Workshop foreseen in 2021.