OSCE supports improvement of gender-based violence curriculum for law enforcement in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina

The OSCE’s Transnational Threats Department held a workshop dedicated to updating the curriculum on gender-based violence for law enforcement in Banja Luka on 14 November, with the support of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republika Srpska.

The workshop gathered 16 participants (ten women and six men) from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republika Srpska, the Police Training Centre and the Working Group for the Drafting of the Law on the Protection from Domestic Violence, as well as from the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

During the workshop, participants discussed the set of recommendations proposed by the OSCE to improve the curriculum on gender-based violence and elaborated on the best way to institutionalize these changes. They also stressed the relevance of the project and their continued interest in its activities.  

"All police officers should be able to respond to and investigate the cases of gender-based violence in a gender-sensitive manner," said prof. dr Mile Šikman, head of the Directorate for Police Training. "We have done a lot to improve our training materials for police officers on the matter, but even more needs to be done, and we welcome the support of the OSCE, it is very valuable for us."

Participants analysed and proposed improvements to the training curriculum to align the current training materials with a state-of-the-art curriculum piloted at the regional level, with the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention and with the main findings from the mapping of police and judicial training curricula on gender-based violence conducted in 2021 as part of the OSCE WIN project.

This was the third workshop on training curriculum organized within the project “Enhancing Criminal Justice Capacities for Combating Gender-based violence in South Eastern Europe”. It will be followed by a specialized training course for police officers, planned to take place in early 2023. This training will be organized together with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republika Srpska, and will include local ownership and be fully adapted to the national context.