Netherlands

Whilst many countries have designed and delivered specific training programs to prepare police officers for participation in peacekeeping missions, there are far fewer opportunities to prepare police experts to act as advisors and mentors to reform initiatives in post-conflict and transitional, organisational development contexts. A good advisor/expert requires a different set of skills, attitude and level of knowledge from those needed for traditional and narrowly defined peacekeeping deployments.

The National Police of the Netherlands, together with DCAF/ISSAT took the initiative to further explore this need in 2011 via their partnership with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office and College of Policing and the Norwegian Police University College. The Australian Federal Police supported the initiative from the start by sending participants and became full managing partners in 2014.

To date 84 delegates from 9 different countries have participated in a Masterclass. Evaluation showed them to have been very successful and alumni of this pilot programme have already made important career moves following the Masterclass. 

There is significant ownership by the five policing organisations, who have taken over the roll-out of the course for the long-term. The modules developed will also assist ISSAT in the inclusion of more police reform modules/examples into its Level 2 Advanced SSR training course.

Within the framework of the revision process of the EU SSR policy, the aim of this mandate was to support the Netherlands and Slovakia to organise a series of workshops and seminars together with the EU institutions (the European External Action Service, the Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development, and the Directorate-General for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations).These consultations were used to allow an exchange of views on SSR, the main challenges and current trends around the world and across organisations.

ISSAT provided:

• Expert advice to the content development of the meetings;
• Expert advice and input to the meetings, either through facilitating panels or as speakers;
• Support to the development of concept notes for the events;
• Support to the development of outcome documents, used to feed in the EU reflection on the new policy.

The plan is to organise several seminars/workshops in 2016 to allow an exchange of views on SSR and the review of the current policy frameworks. With the aim of having a draft policy prepared by mid-2016, the purpose of this series of workshops/seminars is to provide an opportunity to develop a shared understanding between the commission, EEAS, CPCC, CMPD and interested member states. It is envisaged to host up to a maximum of 4 seminars between July 2015 and June 2016 which will facilitate the actual writing process of the SSR framework.

ISSAT is requested to

• Provide expert advice to the content development of the meetings
• Provide expert advice and input to the meetings, either through facilitating panels or as speakers.
• Support to the development of concept notes for the events – where necessary

Support to the development of outcome documents – where necessary

ISSAT facilitated a one-day meeting on how the international community can more effectively engage with political elites in partner countries in order to promote governance within the security and justice sector reform.

ISSAT facilitated a one-day meeting on how the international community can more effectively engage with political elites in partner countries in order to promote governance within the security and justice sector reform.