Page 39 - Coespu Magazine 2018-2

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‘United4Heritage’, colloquially referred to as the ‘Blue Helmets for Culture’.
A final distinguishing character of the Italian role in international policing is the Carabinieri’
internationally-acknowledged excellence in training both local police personnel in the theatre of
operations and international officers prior to their deployment. As far as the host country is
concerned, police
training is an integral
element of the broader
process of peace and
institution-building and
is aimed at reforming,
restructuring, and
rebuilding effective,
legitimate, and
sustainable indigenous
police and law
enforcement capacities,
often in accordance
with the principles of
democratic policing.
Equally important is the
Carabinieri’ role in
training international officers in preparation for their overseas deployment. The fact is that in the
face of the increasing importance of international policing, the availability of qualified police
personnel to serve in peacekeeping missions is very limited, and there is an acute need for
additional specialized manpower. The most prominent Italian initiative in training is certainly the
‘Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units’ (CoESPU), where the Carabinieri train police
officers from throughout the world, with a particular focus on African countries, on the basis of the
model that the Carabinieri created during peacekeeping operations abroad. In 12 years of activity,
CoESPU trained more than 10,000 police officers from 112 countries and 17 international

organizations. As the involvement of the Carabinieri in training
activities has grown significantly over the past years, so has their
international reputation. As General David H. Petraeus very
imaginatively but effectively analogizes, ‘the Carabinieri are for
training what Michael Jordan is for basketball’.

Written by:
Paolo FORADORI
School of International Studies, University of Trento
Paolo Foradori is an Associate Professor of Political Science at
the School of International Studies of the University of Trento
(Italy). From 2011 to 2014 he was Associate Fellow of the Project
on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard

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Paolo Foradori, “Protecting Cultural Heritage during Armed Conflict: The Italian contribution to cultural
Peacekeeping”, in Modern Italy, 2017, 22, 1, pp. 1-17.

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