Police Reform

The next Police Reform Steering Group meeting was conducted

An enlarged session of Police Reform Steering Group was conducted on 13 July 2012.

The Heads of Directorates and Departments of Internal Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as well as representatives from the OSCE Office inTajikistan, German Embassy, Embassy of France, Embassy of theRussian Federation, and US Embassy participated in the meeting.

The meeting was chaired by the Head of Police Reform Steering Group, the First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, Major General N. Oripov, and conducted by the Police Reform National Coordinator, the Deputy Head of International Relations Directorate of the MIA, Colonel Z. Solieva, and the OSCE Senior Police Reform Expert, Mr. Oliver Janser.

Two issues were discussed at the meeting: the draft of Police Reform Strategy and on “Civil Society Assistance to Police Reform” subgroup.

The meeting involved an active discussion of the Strategy sections, such as “Goals and Objectives of Police Reform,” “Legal Framework and Police Reform Principles,” “Professionalism in police activities, Human Resources in Police: selection, preparation, recruitment and promotion of staff,” and etc.

Ms. Zumrad Solieva, who made a presentation on Police Reform, has noted during her speech that “the main objective of police in the fields must be ensuring public safety and protection of citizens’ interests with consideration of their expectations from police activities. It (the police activities) must be planned and implemented taking into account peculiarities and needs of the administrative-autonomous entity. The primary objectives: ensuring safety of an individual, security of local environment, prevention of offenses, identification, prevention, and suppression of crimes and administrative offenses, as well as crime disclosure and its investigation. The priority of police activities in the fields must be prevention of offenses and creating of comfortable, safe environment of administrative-autonomous entity. These objectives must be solved in a daily cooperation with other services and institution of executive power in the fields.”

“The reform is directed to formation in the public conscience of a completely new social appearance and image of police staff, which is free of corruption and aimed at providing assistance to citizens,” she added.

According to Oliver Janser, “in order to achieve the society’s expectations, police service must actively communicate with the community to identify its opinion. The Police should protect public order in a way that the protected society itself wishes it.”

A critical component in reforming the police to “a service for the people” is to empower the institutions of local self-government and executive power to actively engage in the issues that relate to their safety and rule of law (including the population of micro-districts, streets, many-apartment buildings, who organize events for providing rule of law for themselves, for instance, appropriate performance of parents’ responsibilities, combating against child neglect, breach of public order, violation of moral norms and interrelation and etc., in which the law-abiding population is interested). This is based on the recognition that the police, acting alone, cannot fully resolve all those problems, which impede the security of population and rule of law in the society, as well as police is interested in the establishment of business contact with population.

Speaking of improving police staff professionalism, Colonel F. Rajabov, the Deputy Head of the State Service “Police Security” has noted that “recruitment of Police staff on the competition base will be introduced. The new criteria for selection of new employees for internal affairs service will be developed, and the new system of filling vacant positions (vacancy announcement, enabling participation of every candidate in a competitive selection, preliminary study of personal history, competitive selection and assignment to a position) will be settled. The transparency in the recruitment of personnel will encourage an employee of the internal affairs to be engaged in a constant self-perfection, i.e. improvement of professional skills.”

“Staff promotions must be based on the encouragement of initiative, of progressive independent mentality, and on the basis of competitiveness and personal characteristics. Public confidence in professionalism and independency of the staff of internal affairs agencies will lead to growth of police prestige accordingly,” stated Mr. Rajabov.

In the light of the President’s Message, H.E. Emomali Rakhmon, to the Parliament that states “for the sake of successful implementation of crucial objectives, it is necessary to mobilize a constructive and creative power of state structures and institutions, of different public organizations and active members of the society, as in the context of globalization, the use of old techniques will not give desired results,” the Provision on the Working Sub-Group “Civil Society Assistance to Police Reform” was discussed at the meeting. In accordance with this Provision, the Sub-Group is established on the voluntary participation basis of civil society representatives, experts on protection of human rights and freedoms, journalists, political scientists and other public figures. The primary objective of the Sub-Group is providing assistance in police reforming and improvement by engaging civil society in the development of principal normative acts, in elaborating of socio-administrative partnership relations between the civil society and police, in the implementation of principles of publicity, openness and transparency of internal affairs institutions, in protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms of a citizen of Tajikistan.     

The members of the Sub-Group will be assisting in improving the training and preparation activities of police staff, including the participation of non-governmental organizations, the development of curriculums, expertise of methodical aids and other materials, providing the methodological support to specialists of educational institutions within the MIA system, and teaching of separate training courses. They will also take part in the development and review of drafts of the Police Reform Strategy and Program, of other concepts, programs, as well as the initiatives of public unions and citizens on urgent issues of police activities.

The Sub-Group will be conducting an independent monitoring on behalf of civil society over police activities in the fields, in order to identify and to prevent breach of law by police staff, and will be participating in the development of civil society control schemes over police activities.