On 28 June 2021, the Director of the Defence Institution Building School in Georgia, Ms. Tea Nikolashvili, held a ceremony to commemorate five years of partnership with NATO for the professional and institutional development of Georgia’s defence and security establishment.
Amongst the attending distinguished guests were the First Deputy Defence Minister, Ms. Lela Chikovani, Deputy Defence Minister of Georgia, Grigol Giorgadze, Dutch Ambassador to Georgia, Maaike van Koldam, Bulgarian Ambassador to Georgia, Dessislava Ivanova, German Ambassador to Georgia, Hubert Knirsch, the Slovak Deputy Chief of Mission to Georgia, Ms. Zuzana Palosova and the leader of the Core Team supervising the implementation of the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package Colonel Norbert Hess.
“The school’s five-year history is a story of success, a story about teamwork between NATO and Georgia,” Ms. Nikolashvili said. The Slovak Deputy Chief of Mission, Ms. Zuzana Palosova, remarked that the “number of successfully completed courses and their graduates is very encouraging but it is also a significant commitment for the future.” The German Ambassador to Georgia, Mr. Hubert Knirsch, referred to the Defence Institution Building School as a well-established instrument of excellence in Georgia and beyond. Colonel Norbert Hess commended the involved personnel for their important role in shaping future generations of security and defence professionals; he also welcomed the school as a platform for sharing knowledge and experience regarding Black Sea security.
The Defence Institution Building School was founded on 28 June 2016, with the goal to support the modernization of Georgia’s defence and security forces, institutions and structures, through a whole of government approach. Since then, it has served as a flagship initiative under the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package, which was launched in 2014 at the NATO Wales Summit, as part of NATO’s Defence and Related Security Capacity Building Initiative. Today, through the work of advisors from Germany and Slovakia and academic support from the Clingendael Institute, it represents a vehicle for moving NATO-Georgia cooperation forward, helping Georgia advance in its preparations for eventual NATO membership. Steps have already been undertaken to provide the Defence Institution Building School with the status of NATO institutional accredited entity in the near future.