4 November 2022, Mostar - Senior managing police officers from the Federal Police Administration and all 10 Cantonal Ministries of Interior met in Mostar to discuss the efforts to prevent ill-treatment in custody.
Police commissioners and Heads of Sectors for Uniform Police agreed on the implementation of the operational procedures for dealing with suspects and detainees contained in the resource manual developed earlier with the assistance of the EU and Council of Europe joint action on “Strengthening human rights treatment of persons deprived of liberty based on European standards and best practices in Bosnia and Herzegovina’’ action. The manual ‘’Human rights of persons deprived of liberty in police custody’’ was extensively utilised during the eight months long training cycle for police officers of various agencies in BiH delivered within the action by local human rights peer trainers. The senior managers committed to consider the embedding of the good practices contained in the manual, in the daily work of the front line police officers.
The participants agreed that the majority of Cantonal MoIs undertook key actions to integrate the training material developed under the EU/CoE action, in their institutional annual training programmes. The Ministries of Interior of Canton Sarajevo, Canton Tuzla and Zenica Doboj Canton have already done so. The humane treatment of persons deprived of liberty in the police custody is also one of the key conditions posed before the BiH authorities in the EU integration process. Prohibition of ill-treatment is among the defined conditions falling into the competence of the law enforcement agencies. This highlights the need to invest additional efforts into securing sustainability of this training programme.
Other conclusions form this policy level meeting concern the possibility of improving detention capacities and renovation of the holding cells in police detention facilities and a more efficient use of available funding for the professional development or on-the-job training of the police officers.
The activity was organised within the framework of the action "Strengthening human rights treatment of persons deprived of liberty based on European standards and best practices in Bosnia and Herzegovina“ part of the joint European Union and Council of Europe programme "Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022".