Strengthening criminal justice capacities to combat gender-based violence focus of OSCE-organized roundtables in South-Eastern Europe

From January to March 2022, the OSCE convened the second round of meetings of the Multi-Agency Committees in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. The committees were established as part of the OSCE’s project Enhancing Criminal Justice Capacities for Combating Gender-based Violence in South-Eastern Europe.

The project, run by the Transnational Threats Department’s Strategic Police Matters Unit, within the OSCE Secretariat, aims to increase the public trust in criminal justice responses and the level of reporting of cases by enhancing the capacities of criminal justice systems.

The Multi-Agency Committees play a crucial role by providing expertise, strategic guidance on the local contexts and ensuring the project activities’ compliance with other national efforts.

During the second round of meetings, participants discussed current legislation in each of the countries, identified specific trainings needs for combating gender-based violence (GBV) and explored methods of ensuring sustainability of the project’s results. As the participating States in the region face similar challenges and have similar training needs, creating a regional state-of-the-art curriculum provides an excellent basis for a pool of regional trainers and for further development of national curricula for combatting GBV.

Therefore, as the project’s next step, the OSCE will organize a regional workshop on the development of curriculum for all the members of the five countries’ committees.

The project is currently being implemented with the financial support of Germany, Norway, Finland, and France, and will, pending continued funding, last until 2024.