28/01/2026

Within the framework of the NATO Defence Education Enhancement Programme (NATO DEEP) for building the defence capacities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was extended in 2023 to include the Agency for Education and Professional Training (AEPTM), a review conference was held at the Agency over the past two days. During the conference, the NATO DEEP team for the Building Integrity Reference Curriculum (BIRC) from Brussels, led by expert Vasssel Genchev, presented the reference curriculum “Building Integrity”.

Following three years of successful cooperation, which resulted in the development of curricula for counter-terrorism in line with the NATO Counter-Terrorism Reference Curriculum (CTRC) for SIPA, the Border Police (GP) and the Directorate for Coordination of Police Bodies (DKPT), representatives of NATO DEEP offered further assistance to the Agency and to police bodies under the Ministry of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This assistance relates to the development of curricula and the implementation of training on the topic of police integrity, with the aim of further strengthening the security capacities of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The objective of these activities is, following the presentation of the NATO BIRC, to establish a Working Group that will develop a Police Integrity Training Curriculum for the police agencies. NATO instructors will then conduct training for future instructors (train-the-trainer programmes).

In his address, the Head of the NATO DEEP BIRC team, Vasssel Genchev, recalled the success achieved in previous years with the adoption of the first Individual Tailored Partnership Programme (ITPP) between Bosnia and Herzegovina and NATO, which represents a new framework for cooperation and structures future activities. Speaking about the NATO BIRC programme, Genchev stated that its elements could be useful for Bosnia and Herzegovina in education, training and the achievement of strategic objectives. “NATO is in a position to provide support through its academic programmes and high-quality experts, who can share their experience and support us in identifying the most useful elements of our curriculum and applying them in practice,” said Genchev. Recalling ten years of successful cooperation with the Ministry of Defence, he expressed hope that this good practice would continue with the Ministry of Security.

The Director of the Agency for Education and Professional Training, Marko Vujević, expressed his gratitude to the NATO HQ in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the long-standing cooperation that continues to develop. “Cooperation with NATO in this case should also be concrete and, following the BIRC presentation, should include an analysis of the needs of police agencies, the development of curricula tailored to the specific characteristics of our police agencies that will apply them in the field, and ultimately the training of our instructors. We have already done this and have positive experience in the area of counter-terrorism; all three of our police agencies were involved and the implementation has shown this approach to be effective and positive,” Vujević concluded.