page_title: Portuguese Armed Forces
section_title: The National Republican Guard
hierarchical_section_title: Portuguese Armed Forces / The National Republican Guard
caption_attribution_description: English: Changing of the Guard in Palácio Nacional de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal
context_page_description: The Portuguese Armed Forces are the military of Portugal. They include the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the other unified bodies and the three service branches: Portuguese Navy, Portuguese Army and Portuguese Air Force.
  The President of the Republic is the head of the Portuguese military, with the title of "Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces". The management of the Armed Forces and the execution of the national defense policy is however done by the government via its Minister of National Defense. The highest-ranking officer in the military is the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, which has operational control of the Armed Forces during peacetime and assumes their full control when a state of war exists.
  The Armed Forces are charged with protecting Portugal as well as supporting international peacekeeping efforts when mandated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United Nations and/or the European Union.
  Portugal was ranked the 3rd most peaceful country in the World in the Global Peace Index 2017, presently not having significant national security issues.
context_section_description: The Nacional Republican Guard (GNR, Guarda Nacional Republicana) is a special corps of troops that has the special feature of being a military force that is not part of the Armed Forces.
  It is a gendarmerie type security force, made up of around 26 000 military personnel, that is part of the internal security system. It is responsible for the preventive policing of most of the rural areas of the country, the patrolling of the major highways, the customs enforcement and the coastal control. It also performs some special missions like the providing of ceremonial military State honor guards, the security of the Presidential, Parliament and Foreign Ministry palaces, the environment and nature protection and the rescue and forest firefighting. In time of peace, the GNR is subordinated to the minister of Internal Administration, except in the scope of uniforms, military doctrine, equipment and armament within which is subordinated to the minister of National Defense.
  Although not being part of the Armed Forces, the GNR can be placed under the operational command of the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces in the cases foreseen in the statutes governing the National Defense, the Armed Forces, the state of siege and the state of emergency. In the scope of its military missions, the GNR is specially adapted for the fulfillment of military operations other than war. Forces of the GNR have been deployed in international missions in high conflict countries that did not fit with the use of a civilian police force, but where it was not considered politically appropriate to deploy units of the Armed Forces. These international deployments may be done in the scope of the multinational specialized units (MSU) of the European Gendarmerie Force, as it happened with the GNR deployment in Iraq.
caption: Changing of the GNR guard of the Presidential Palace
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