Police & Human Rights - OMCT Conference (November 2000)

OMCT
Conference for Police from Central and Eastern Europe

Krakow, 16th
and 17th November, 2000.

Forty
delegates shall be attending this two-day conference from police organisations
of the following Central and Eastern European Countries: Bulgaria, Romania,
Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia,
Hungary, Lithuania and The United Kingdom.

The core
focus of the conference is to provide a forum for police organisations within
Central and Eastern European countries to obtain realistic and successful
solutions to the problem of how to create police organisations that respect the
rights of citizens and thus police by consent. The challenge to police is to
implement human rights standards into everyday police activity in addition to
evolving as a “human rights compliant” organisation both at the policy,
procedural and strategic level.

Prior to
the organisation of the conference, OMCT identified projects that have already
been initiated in Central and Eastern Europe under the following headings:
juvenile justice, improving community relations and building trust, improving
detention facilities and supervision of detainees, increasing transparency and
accountability, the use of force and firearms, public order policing,
interviewing suspects and human rights training.

Having
identified these projects, key individuals were approached and asked to present
an outline of their work and achievements (in addition to difficulties and
obstacles experienced) to the other delegates attending the conference. In this
way delegates can obtain culturally relevant material that could be applicable
to their own police organisations. This is crucial, as the application of
methodologies designed and implemented in the West to Central and Eastern
European countries is not always the most beneficial approach.

All
relevant material of the conference shall be included in a “conference
publication” which shall be available on request from the OMCT office in
Brussels after November 17th 2000. OMCT is also joined by the
Jagllionian University Human Rights Centre in Krakow in the organisation of the
conference.

Financial
assistance for the conference received from the British Embassy in Warsaw.