Database of US Foreign Military Training and Assistance since 2001
Since 1999 the United States government has published detailed data on the foreign military units that it has trained. Security Force Monitor has created a new, more accessible version of this data, automatically extracted from official sources, along with a simple search tool through which to explore it:
Go to our Database of US Foreign Military Training and Assistance
This database contains over 213,000 training entries and covers the period 2001 to 2019. It includes data extracted from over 5,600 pages taken from 18 of the 20 “Foreign Military Training and DoD Engagement Activities of Interest: Volume 1” reports issued jointly by the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Defense. While the 2017, 2018, and 2019 reports are published the State Department’s website, the source documents for reports issued before 2016 can be found in the State Department archives.
We update this dataset as soon possible after new reports are issued. The publication of the 2019-2020 report – which we expected in late 2020 or early 2021 – is now long overdue!
This dataset is a useful for examining the effectiveness of the United States’ implementation of the “Leahy law”, a set of legislative provisions that prohibit the United States from using funds to assist foreign military units where there is credible information implicating a unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights. Users of this dataset can search for specific units, dates and locations of training and assistance implemented by the United States, and compare that with what is known about that unit and its human rights record.
In the blogposts below, we explain more about why and how we created this dataset, the technology we used to make it, and how you can use this material in your own work: