Compendium of Standards, Good Practices and Recommendations » Clear procedures should be established for members of the armed forces to raise within the armed forces concerns about illegality, corruption, mistreatment, bullying or other human rights abuses. These should be accompanied by clear information on available external reporting channels. Service personnel who report abuses using authorized procedures should be guaranteed confidentiality and be protected by law from retaliation. » Information about the process that will follow such reporting of abuse or wrongdoing should be made readily available to service members, so they have a clear idea of the timeline and other actions that might need to be taken further down the road. Similarly, information about their rights, and their special protected status as complainants, should be made clear to them at the moment of the complaint at the latest, and ideally earlier. » In case of disciplinary action or criminal prosecution against a whistle-blower from the armed forces, the case should be tried in a civil court. As further developed in “Chapter 18: Discipline and Military Justice”, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that a right to a fair trial is incompatible with a series of circumstances, such as if the superior officer of the defendant appoints the judges to try the case, appoints the prosecuting and/or defence counsel or prepares the evidence against the accused.225 Taking into account the special nature of a whistle-blower’s actions, which might be seen by some in the armed forces as going against military discipline, or esprit de corps, it is more likely that a civil court will give them a fair trial. This is further buttressed by the nature of whistle-blower complaints, which must be to the benefit of “the general public.” Further reading Benjamin S. Buckland and Aidan Wills, “Whistleblowing and the Security Sector”, in Nevena Ruzic and Bojana Medenica (eds.) Protection of Whistleblowers (Belgrade: Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data, 2013, https://whistleblowingnetwork. org/WIN/media/pdfs/National-security-INT-2013-Buckley-Wills-Whistleblowing-in-theSecurity-Sector.pdf. William McDermott and Efrat Gilfrad, Social Media Guide for Ombuds Institutions for the Armed Forces (Geneva: DCAF, 2017), https://www.dcaf.ch/sites/default/files/publications/ documents/Social-Media-Guide-Ombuds-Institutions.pdf. Open Society Foundations, Global Principles on National Security and the Right to Information (Tshwane Principles) (New York: Open Society Foundations, 2013), www. opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/global-principles-national-security-and-freedominformation-tshwane-principles. 225 European Court of Human Rights, Findlay v. the United Kingdom, EHRR 221, 25 February 1997; and Grieves v. the United Kingdom, EHRR 2, 16 December 2003 (concerning the lack of independence of a naval judge advocate). Revisions to the procedures in the United Kingdom introduced by the Armed Forces Act of 1996 have been found to satisfy Article 6 of the ECHR: Cooper v. the United Kingdom, EHRR 8, 16 December 2003. 105