European Observatory to Combat Radicalization – EOCR
From Trained Officers to Training Institutions: UNOCT Certifies National Police Academy Faculty to Deliver Counter-Terrorism Investigations Curriculum
UN ـ The United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), through its Global Counter-Terrorism Investigations Programme, certified 22 faculty members from national police academies in Burkina Faso, Kenya and Nigeria to deliver its specialised curriculum on intelligence-led counter-terrorism investigations on 31 July 2026.
The three-week Train the Trainer course, held in Rabat from 13 to 31 July 2026 in partnership with Al Akhawayn University, reflects an evolution in the Programme’s approach to capacity-building. Rather than focusing solely on training individual officers, the Programme is strengthening the national institutions responsible for training them.
Since 2022, the Programme’s Specialised Training on Counter-Terrorism Investigations (STOCTI) — an Executive Master’s developed with Al Akhawayn University and NECHE-accredited since 2024 — has trained 82 officers from 17 African Member States. While STOCTI has delivered strong results its long-term sustainability depended on the capacity of trained officers to replicate the training at the national level.
To address this challenge, the programme has adopted an academy integration model. Rather than delivering training on an open-ended basis, UNOCT transfers the curriculum, methodology and quality standards to national police academies, enabling Member States to deliver the training independently within their own institutions, in their own languages.
Building National Teaching Capacity
The participants who convened in Rabat were experienced counter-terrorism practitioners and certified trainers. The course focused not on investigative techniques themselves, but on the skills required to teach credible, human rights-compliant counter-terrorism investigations to the academic standard the curriculum requires.
Delivered with support frowithrwiththe International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law, subject-matter experts from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Morocco’s Direction Générale de la Sûreté Nationale — the programme guides participants from the foundations of adult learning through the facilitating technical modules and the development of delivery plans for their own academies. Approximately seventy per cent of the course was devoted to practical facilitation exercises. Participants were assessed against a five-criterion framework, in which rights-based and gender-responsive facilitation carried equal weight to operational credibility.
Strengthening institutions
The course constitutes the third phase of the Programme’s five-phase academy integration model — remote engagement, in-country workshop, train-the-trainer, mentored national delivery, and accreditation and sustainability.
Progress is already visible across participating countries. In Kenya, the National Counter-Terrorism Investigations Academy hosted a national pilot of the Counter-Terrorism Investigations Course earlier this year. In Nigeria, the Inspector-General of Police has endorsed a strategic partnership to institutionalise the curriculum within the Nigeria Police Force through the Nigeria Police Academy. Burkina Faso’s engagement is now formally under way.
European Observatory to Combat Radicalization – EOCR
