Senior managing police officers from the Federal Police Administration and all 10 Cantonal Ministries of Interior met on 4 November 2022 in Mostar.
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 under the “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 used as the backdrop for the eight months long training cycle for police officers of various agencies in BiH delivered within the project by local human rights peer trainers. The senior managers were asked to consider now further embedding of the good practices contained in the manual in the daily work of the front line police officers.
The joint conclusion was that the majority of Cantonal MoIs undertook to integrate the training material developed under the EU/CoE project 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 conditions posed before the BiH authorities in the process of consideration of the EU candidate status. Prohibition of ill-treatment is among the said 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“ which is implemented under the joint European Union and Council of Europe programme „Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022“.
