Five Eyes

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Context

• Canada confirmed that the shared intelligence among ‘Five Eyes’ partners” led Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make allegations against India in the killing of Khalistani militant Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

'Five Eyes' – the Intelligence Alliance

About

• The Five Eyes, founded in 1941, is an intelligence alliance comprising nations including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the US.

Origin

• The origins of the FVEY can be traced to informal secret meetings during World War IIbetween British and American code-breakers, which started before the US formally entered the war,  followed by the Allies' 1941 Atlantic Charter that established their vision of the post-war world. 

Part of the UK-USA Agreement

• These countries are parties to the multilateral UK-USA Agreement, a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence.

Mandate

• These partner nations exchange a wide spectrum of intelligence within one of the world's most tightly-knit multilateral agreements as part of the collaboration.

Features

• The Five Eyes agreement parties are “diverse societies, governed by rule of law and robust human rights and are bonded by a common language.
• These characteristics aid the partners in sharing information with one another to protect their shared national interests.

Evolution

• Following its origin, the agency later enlarged its core group to ‘Nine Eyes’ and 14 Eyes alliances as well, encompassing more countries as security partners.
• The ‘Nine Eyes’ group expands to cover the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Norway, whereas the 14 Eyes bloc further includes Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Sweden.