Our mandate on policing

The OSCE’s policing activities are based on various individual mandates, action plans and tasks, including several Ministerial Council and Permanent Council decisions taken since 1998. The Charter for European Security, adopted at the Istanbul Summit Meeting in 1999, represents the central platform for the Organization’s involvement in this sphere. The Charter contains the participating States' commitment to enhance the OSCE’s role in civilian police-related activities.

At the Ninth Ministerial Council in Bucharest in 2001, the participating States decided to increase and promote co-operation among participating States in countering new security challenges, including by providing advice on how to make policing more effective. The States also adopted the Bucharest Plan of Action for Combating Terrorism, which recognized the need for the OSCE to provide assistance, upon request, in the areas of fighting trafficking in human beings, illicit drugs and small arms and light weapons, including through police-related advisory and capacity-building support.

In 2003, at the 11th Ministerial Council in Maastricht, the participating States adopted the OSCE Strategy to Address Threats to Security and Stability in the Twenty-First Century. The document reinforces the OSCE’s intent, again upon request, “to increase its focus on assistance to authorities, including at the local level, on fighting crime and criminal networks” and “to define and develop core competencies for police activities such as training and capacity-building activities”.

Three years later, the participating States reaffirmed its focus on organized crime, by adopting a decision on this issue at the 14th Ministerial Council in Brussels in 2006. This follow-up Decision on Organized Crime included provisions on enhancing attention to the key role of criminal justice systems in institution-building and in the promotion of the rule of law. Another major task spelled out by the Decision was to
build on and consolidate the knowledge and experience on criminal justice and organized crime, and to continue co-operating with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on questions of organized crime and illicit drug trafficking.

The Strategic Framework for Police-Related Activities, adopted by the Permanent Council in 2012, defines the OSCE’s goals and priorities in the area of police-related activities. It details that the Organization shall assist the authorities of the participating States—at their request—to develop and reform their police services and address threats posed by criminal activity, as well as advise and assist them in the planning and implementation of police reform programmes. The Framework deals with a broad array of police-related issues, such as police development and reform and the fight against organized transnational crime, including trafficking in illicit drugs and precursors, trafficking in human beings, the sexual exploitation of children on the internet, and cybercrime.

Later in 2012, at the Ministerial Council meeting in Dublin, the States adopted a decision on the OSCE’s Efforts to Address Transnational Threats, which endorsed four Permanent Council decisions from 2012, among them the aforementioned Strategic Framework for Police-Related Activities and the Concept for Combating the Threat of Illicit Drugs and the Diversion of Chemical Precursors. With the adoption of these decisions, the participating States reaffirmed the key role that the OSCE’s police-related activities play in its efforts to address threats to security and stability posed by criminal activity.