The Australian Federal Police (AFP) has engaged the University of Queensland Social Research Centre (UQSRC) to evaluate its overseas policing operations.
Funded by the AFP, UQSRC will conduct a three-year research project assessing the activities of the International Deployment Group (IDG).
Project Manager, Mr Bryn Hughes, said the research would help the IDG to gauge the success of its international policing interventions.
“At the end of these three years we will be coming up with a performance framework which we can hand to the AFP and they can have, hopefully, an extremely good idea of how well activities are doing, or how much they’re contributing and in what ways,” Mr Hughes said.
“The end goal is to have an extremely practical yet at the same time what will be an extremely sophisticated framework.”
The IDG was established by the AFP in 2004 and currently has officers deployed in Cyprus, the Solomon Islands, Sudan, Timor-Leste, Nauru, Tonga, Vanuatu, Cambodia and Afghanistan.
“The IDG is essentially the AFP’s contribution to global peace and security,” Mr Hughes said.
“Basically, they are the federal police who go to a number of countries that are asking for international help in a number of ways.
“One of them is military, but increasingly they recognise the importance of police.”
And by implementing peace operations in neighbouring countries, the IDG can better protect Australia against the types of crime that comes from regional instability.
“The citizens in these countries are lacking security and the AFP has significant impact on bringing back basic human rights and the rule of law,” Mr Hughes said.
“…Clearly Australians would prefer a region that is more stable and the Australian Federal Police can help with that task.”
Mr Hughes said UQSRC research would draw upon the experiences of the AFP’s overseas operations and from the latest scholarship and thinking about international best practice.
Before the final performance framework is submitted to the AFP, its effectiveness will be field tested by UQSRC researchers.
The project team is led by UQ’s Professor Alex Bellamy from the School of Political Science and International Studies, and includes two AFP-funded higher degree researchers in addition to a number of other UQ research students.
MEDIA: Mr Hughes (07 3346 9343, b.hughes@uq.edu.au) or Penny Robinson at UQ Communications (07 3365 9723, penny.robinson@uq.edu.au)
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