Implementation of equal opportunity in the armed forces Dealing with racial discrimination is not simply a question of providing legal avenues for handling complaints. US and UK experience stresses the importance of policies and management initiatives. In the US, Executive Order No. 9981 was introduced in 1948 to secure equality in the treatment of all persons in the military, regardless of race, colour, religion, or national origin. In 1971, the Defense Race Relations Institute, later renamed the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, was created to advise the government and to carry out training. As Box 12.6 shows, from the US experience, if combating discrimination and minority representation in the armed forces is seen as a sufficiently important goal of public policy, significant steps may be taken.209 Box 12.6 Promoting Equal Opportunities in the US Military209 Within the Department of Defense, responsibility lies with a senior official: the deputy under secretary of defense for equal opportunity. The Defense Department maintains the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, which trains equalopportunity personnel, advises the Department on equal-opportunity policy, and conducts related research. The Department requires each service to maintain and review affirmative-action plans and to complete an annual “Military Equal Opportunity Assessment”. This assessment reports whether various equal-opportunity objectives have been met and identifies problems such as harassment and discrimination. The assessment includes both data and narrative assessments of progress in 10 areas. One of these is recruitment and accessions (i.e., commissioning of officers). Other areas include officer and enlisted promotion results, completion of officer and enlisted professional military education (e.g., the war colleges and non-commissioned officer academies), augmentation of officers into the regular component, assignment to billets that are servicedefined as career-enhancing and to billets for commanding officers and deputy commanding officers, and overand under-representation of minorities or women in any military occupational category. Specific programmes have been created for outreach to certain historically disfavoured groups: • American Indian/Alaskan Native Employment Program • Asian American/Pacific Islander Employment Program • Black Employment Program • Hispanic Employment Program Similarly, in the UK, concerns about the under-representation of ethnic-minority groups in the armed forces, racial discrimination and bullying, and low retention rates have led to the devising and implementation of a series of proactive policies. A partnership agreement was concluded between the Ministry of Defence and the statutory anti-discrimination body, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), in 1998. This covers measures to achieve racial equality, including achievement of ethnic-minority recruitment targets, removal of barriers to ethnic-minority recruitment and promotion, increased numbers of ethnic-minority officers at higher ranks, effective action to prevent racist abuse and making equal-opportunity performance part of annual appraisals. In 2001, the CRE reported to the Armed Forces Select Committee of the House of Commons that substantial progress had been 209  Department of Defense, <http://www.dod.mil/prhome/eotenent.html>; Department of Defense Directive 1350.2, 18 August 1995, <http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/rtf/d13502x.rtf>; Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, <http://www.deomi.org/deomi.htm>. 107 Handbook on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Armed Forces Personnel