Twenty Kosovo Police officers of managerial level are attending an in-depth training on human rights, police ethics and combatting ill-treatment this week in Pristina. The attendants form a diverse group of trainees in terms of ranks and ethnicity and come from different police units and cover all geographical areas of Kosovo.

For the next two days, the participating officers will learn from the experience of three Council of Europe consultants, who are presenting relevant international standards and sharing their knowledge and skills in the field of policing and human rights. They are encouraging the police officers to actively contribute to the training session by sharing their practices while discussing relevant human rights issues such as crowd management and the role of police, determination of complaints against the police and combatting police Ill-treatment. In addition, the training is also focusing on socially and culturally important issues like racism and gender.

This training is organized by the “Enhancing human rights policing in Kosovo” project that is implemented by the Council of Europe within the framework of the Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey programme.

* This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence.