-part of effort to protect country’s national interests
The Guyana Defence Force’s National Defence Institute (NDI) was launched yesterday with the aim of providing specialised and accredited academic training on security issues utilising a wide array of local and international experts.
While housed at the University of Guyana, Turkeyen campus, at which classes will commence next month, the institute will be an independent entity, drawing its teaching pool from experts at home, the region, and internationally, with immediate plans for the training of security and civilian persons on addressing cybersecurity threats, and an analysis of the threats that gangs pose.
“The National Defence Institute we launch today. It’s not just another training institution. It is integral to our national defence strategy and our regional defence strategy. The institute is a crucial part of building capacity and expertise within our national defence architecture,” President Irfaan Ali said at the event to mark the launch which was held in the Lula Room at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, in Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown.
“The institute will be expected to provide training to a wide range of stakeholders, including the private sector and students. Defence is everybody’s business, and therefore, this institute must be geared towards the training and utilising [of] the inputs of various stakeholders. The institute is designed to be a centre of excellence, a place where the leaders of tomorrow’s defence security architecture will be shaped. As I’ve said before, our vision for this institute is not limited to the borders of Guyana. We aim for it to become the region’s premier institution for defence studies, attracting talent and expertise from across the Caribbean and beyond,” he added.
The NDI would be working closely with the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, which is a United States Department of Defense institution; the Caribbean Regional Security System (RSS); and the Caribbean Community’s Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS).
The president said that the institute will be linked to Caricom’s RSS and will serve as an academic research institution, producing action plans and analysis of threats and challenges facing the region.
“The National Defence
Institute is a regional institute, and within a short time period, we want this to be the premier intelligence defence security agency in the region. We want this institute to be an institute that will be training all our strategic thinkers in defence and security. This institute will be the sister institute of the National Defense University Perry Center that will help them to train persons within CARICOM, South America, and Central America. So the time dynamism of this institute will be interesting and will be evolving.”
A number of issues affecting Guyana and the Caribbean will be researched and analysed and four times a year there will be reviews published on matters such as migration patterns, gang violence, natural disaster impacts and their prevention.
Central hub
In March of this year, while delivering feature remarks at an award presentation ceremony for the University of Guyana’s Institute of Human Resiliency, Strategic Security and the Future (IHRSSF) that was bestowed by the 2023 Perry Centre for Hemispheric Defense Studies Award for Excellence in Security and Defense Education, Ali had announced that plans were on stream for a NDI here.
Yesterday, Ali said that the NDI’s launch was also part of a larger effort aimed at protecting this country’s national interests and safeguarding the region against every threat, particularly the safeguarding of sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Guyana, he pointed out, was subject to threats to its territorial integrity from the time it became an independent nation in 1966. “These challenges have demanded a continuous focus on the defence of our