The report provides information about police capacity- and institution-building undertaken by the OSCE field operations in support of their respective host-State governments and describes the development of activities of the SPMU...
The report provides information about police capacity- and institution-building undertaken by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) field operations in support of their respective host-State governments. The report describes the development of new or existing activities, and work by the OSCE Strategic Police Matters Unit (SPMU), to strengthen law enforcement activities within a country, region or on behalf of all the Organization’s participating States. Attention is drawn to the role of the OSCE Senior Police Adviser to the Secretary General (SPA) and to resource and other matters at the conclusion of the report. The OSCE Office for
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) Annual Report on Police–Related Activities is attached to this report as an appendix.
The concerns which, during 2003 had most dominated the OSCE policing agenda for post-conflict States and States in transition, i.e., transnational crime, the negative effect of corruption on sustainable economic growth, police violations of human rights and the need for people to be served by a knowledgeable and responsive police service, have become incorporated into a list of long-term practical assistance priorities, identified jointly by OSCE policing assessments and host-State expressions of needs. The OSCE now possesses a growing repository of knowledge and experience about the areas of policing most commonly requiring improvement within such States and the forms of assistance and training most suited to achieving it.
This repository of knowledge is being supplemented by information about, and connections to, other intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations active in delivering credible police-related assistance, with a view to achieving greater engagement with them and providing a stronger practitioner input to political decision-making.
Whilst the predominant focus of OSCE police-related assistance is on the need for knowledge-based policing -particularly in those areas of day-to-day operational policing which are fundamental to all else – there is an even greater need for a vision that will determine the culture of policing as much as the technical competencies to be achieved. Assistance to formulate a political vision for policing is increasingly identifying itself as a principal element of OSCE police-related activity.