OSCE Office supports Croatia, Tajikistan exchange on police reform and family violence

The OSCE Office in Tajikistan and the interior ministries of Tajkistan and Croatia supported an initiative to share expertise and experience on police reform and response to domestic violence with community policing experts, civil society organizations and community crisis centres.  

During a five-day visit to Tajikistan which concluded on 2 December 2011, Sandro Bošnjak, the Head of the Department for EU Integration, Implementation and Monitoring of Projects at the Croatian Interior Ministry, met senior police officials, including First Deputy Minister Ramadan Rahimov as well as members of the Ministerial Working Group on Police Reform and the Ministerial Working Group on Gender-Sensitive Policing. 

Meetings were also held at the Police Academy, which now offers a new course on domestic violence, developed with the support of the OSCE Office, as well as with representatives of the Press Centre of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and local journalists. 

In Dushanbe and Kulyab, in southern Tajikistan, he visited three special police units handling domestic violence cases that were equipped and trained by the Ministry and the OSCE. In Kulyab, he also met civil society activists, lawyers and counsellors who, working with the OSCE-supported Women's Resource Centre, provide crisis support to victims of domestic violence.

A seminar presenting the OSCE's assessment on "Mapping Community-Based Family Crisis Services and Status of Referral Networks" was also held during the visit.  Research presented by OSCE expert Subhiya Mastonshoeva focused on formal and informal strategies in place at the community level to address domestic violence, while Bošnjak discussed Croatia's new national strategy to combat family violence and the special role of police in education to prevent violence.  

A delegation from Tajikistan's Ministry of Internal Affairs visited Croatia in an Office-organized study tour in May 2011.