Supporting Security Sector Reform
BiH and Slovakia’s parliamentarians exchange experiences in the field of political control over military and internal security forces. |
In co-operation with other international institutions, the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) supports defence and other security sector institutions of BiH as they strive to meet legislative, personnel, institutional, restructuring and budgetary targets as set by respective BiH authorities. The bulk of this work is carried out by the Department of Security Co-operation. Within the Department, the Institutions Building Section has continued its important role in promoting and supporting the establishment of state-level security institutions.
The Institutions Building section had as its main focus during years 2003-2005 the support of the Defence Reform Commission’s work. When defence reform moved into its implementation phase with NATO taking the lead, the Section’s contribution to defence reform implementation gradually reduced and it now focusses more on security sector reform issues outside defence reform. The Section’s experts are still available to assist in defence reform implementation, if such assistance is requested by the BiH Ministry of Defence.
Currently, the Section's main focus is to support all security sector ministries and agencies in implementing the new Security Policy Paper guidelines, which were adopted by the BiH Presidency in February 2006. The Section provided expertise to this work and hosted several working group meetings. The Section is also prepared to support future security policy paper update work, planned to start during 2007.
As a practical tool for the Security Policy Paper implementation the Section has been actively promoting the idea of an organised security policy training for BiH authorities and key decision makers in the whole of BiH society. The Section has been actively developing a course program for two planned pilot courses in 2007 and will continue to provide practical support to selected course staff and principal instructors from various ministries in the pilot courses' preparation phase. This development work takes place in co-operation with OHR and NATO HQ Sarajevo.
The Section is also contributing to BiH’s improved compliance with OSCE politico-military commitments and plans to reintroduce Code-of-Conduct training [OSCE Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security] to major units of the Armed Forces BiH. Additionally, the Section is considering including those other BiH authorities who work in the security sector. Since 1996, the Department has successfully carried out Code-of-Conduct training to the BiH security sector decision makers, focusing mainly on influential personnel of the Armed Forces BiH.
The Section also contributes to regional co-operation by assisting BiH representatives from various ministries with their preparations for participation in international, especially regional, conferences and working groups. In many cases the Section has also assisted BiH authorities during these events, e.g it has given particular support to regional NATO/Stability Pact Working Groups on defence conversion. This support was agreed upon during the South East European Defence Ministers Summit in February 2005.
The Institutions Building Section accepts the difficult challenge to successfully co-ordinate the myriad security sector activities with the plans of several relevant organizations, such as the OHR, NATO and European Union and, simultaneously, ensuring that BiH receives full support, as an OSCE Participating state, in its endeavour to fully comply with its OSCE politico-military commitments.
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