Community policing discussed at Human Dimension Meeting

The meeting's goals were three-fold:

• to elaborate on the concept and characteristics of community policing 
• to review country-related examples of how community policing could be implemented
• to discuss the role of community policing in building confidence in minority communities and post-conflict situations with reference to previous experiences and lessons learned

Sessions highlighted the general benefits of community policing, such as increased transparency, accountability, confidence, trust and partnership and focussed on particular experiences and problems of transitional societies in introducing community policing.

Participants stressed that the lack of a clear and common concept of community policing in the OSCE area and the separation of community policing principles from general rule of law principles was one of the key problems that needed to be addressed.