OSCE Mission to Skopje hosts third regional meeting on community policing

SKOPJE, 16 October 2007 - Police experts, high-ranking police officers and civil society representatives from across Europe gathered today in Skopje for an OSCE Mission workshop to share best practices on community policing in multi-ethnic societies.

The two-day workshop, which brings together OSCE community policing experts from all field operations and police officers from Albania, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey, is organized jointly by the local Interior Ministry, the OSCE Mission to Skopje and the Vienna-based OSCE Strategic Police Matters Unit.

Ambassador Giorgio Radicati, Head of the OSCE Mission to Skopje, said: "As today's discussion has shown, the commitment of the host country's authorities to promoting and implementing community policing nationwide has been essential to making community policing a success story here."

Risto Galevski, Assistant Minister and Section Head for European Integration and International Co-operation at the Interior Ministry, added: "I am pleased that the community policing initiatives developed by our Ministry in 2002 are implemented successfully and during this expert discussion we can share our best practices."

"We are focusing on building confidence in minority communities and the results are visible: the principles of multi-ethnicity are better addressed in community policing practices."

Murat Yildiz, Political Affairs Officer from the OSCE Strategic Police Matters Unit, said: "Exchanging good practices and lessons learned are two key objectives of this meeting. I am pleased that the OSCE facilitates this exchange of experience."