Funding Needs: 3-year funding

Total Budget: 570,000 euros
Soros Commitment: 190,000 euros
Other commitments: 40,000 euros (from CSMC)
Funding requested: 340,000 euros

Geographic Area: Romania

Area of Work: Law: Institution Building

Relevant Working Table/Task Force: WT3 – Justice and Home

Description:
The main goal for this program is to provide training and technical assistance for Romania’s law enforcement officials and communities, in order to help build integrated, proactive approaches to community policing initiatives. This is accomplished through the application of crime prevention techniques and problem solving strategies, and the establishment of community partnerships.

The purpose of this program is to guide the implementation of community policing within the police department. The work will be accomplished with members of the County and City Police Departments, city officials, and members of the community. Members of the community will be brought in not only to enlist their support, but to ensure their active participation in the implementation process. The specific duties and responsibilities will include:

• Developing methods to enhance community policing as a philosophy and an organizational strategy within the Police Department in several cities of Romania.
• Developing implementation work-plans for each district. In the first year a sector of the city of Iasi will be a pilot project.
• Viewing proposals concerning major community policing projects; conducting bi-monthly meetings with district commanders concerning community policing projects.
• Developing and monitoring collaboration involving police employees, city department representatives, social agency contacts, and - most importantly - community members.
• Identifying and addressing concerns and problems related to the implementation of community policing through a periodic review of community policing activities and interviews with Police Department personnel.
• Coordinating efforts within the Police Department and with other government agencies to adequately respond to crime, safety and quality of life issues.
• Developing tools to measure effective implementation and operational success.
• Providing direction to district commanders in the implementation of community policing strategies related to their district.
• Conducting an assessment and evaluation of "multi-district" or "large target area" problem- solving initiatives.
• Monitoring the efforts of district commanders to improve the quality of life and enhance safety through collaboration with citizens and other agencies.
• Developing projects that facilitate community policing in the city of Iasi.
• Assisting section, district, and unit commanders with the submission of their annual budgets concerning costs of their respective community policing projects.
• Continually reviewing the implementation process and recommending changes in the community policing strategic implementation plan, if necessary.
• Directing Police Department efforts to implement each of the strategies contained in the community policing strategic implementation plan within the allotted time line.
• Preparing an annual report concerning implementation of community policing
• Implementation of a CCTV system in hot sectors of the selected cites and towns.

Background:
Community policing is a custom-oriented approach to building partnerships to make communities safe. It is problem-solving at the level closest to the problem. It involves channeling all of the police resources to the neighborhood level to help solve problems and build self-reliant neighborhoods. The community policing difference is that police enforcement strategies are based upon priorities set through the community’s identification of the problems.

Until now, in Romania no community safety strategies were designed and there was no focused approach among local actors (local public administration, police, local agencies) related to reduce the rate of criminality and violence inside communities. Responsibility for the safety of a certain area or region of the city is always delegated to the local police which use classic old methods of policing and which are entirely subordinated to the Minister of Interior rather than the local authorities. A new and modern approach establishing collaboration between community representatives and local police could support the creation of a legitimate, fair and effective network of police authority.

Progress to Date:
The program will start in May 2000 in Iasi city in collaboration with Iasi City Hall, Iasi County Police and City Police.

Organizations Involved:

• Community Safety and Mediation Center
• County and City Police Departments from selected towns
• Local authorities of the selected towns
• Scotland Yard and London Police will provide expertise and exchange of experience

Lead Agency:
Community Safety and Mediation Center
Laura Albu, Executive President
Str Moara de Foc 35, et 7, Iasi, 6600, Romania
Tel: (4032) 252920 or 252922; Fax: 252 926; Email: cmsc@iasi.osf.ro

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Funding Needs: This is a 2 year project.

Total Budget: $120,000
Soros Commitment: $ 40,000
Other Commitments: $ 0
Funding Required: $ 80,000

Geographic Area: South Eastern Europe

Area of Work: Law: Legislative Reform

Working Table: WT1 – Human Rights, National Minorities WT3 – Justice and Home Affairs

Description:
Our strategic goal is to lay down the conditions for constitutional reforms throughout the region, and thus to contribute to establishing post-crisis political and economic rules and institutions. Our objectives are to assist in the reform of the constitutions in the region and to facilitate coordination among governments.

After a survey based on a public discussion involving experts, politicians, the media, and Stability Pact officials, we will develop recommendations for constitutional changes and amendments through working groups with the participation of politicians. We will then organize various policy forums to produce a collective action toward accepting the major proposals for constitutional changes.

Background:
Most of the constitutions in South Eastern European countries contain major flaws. All or most SEE constitutions contain provisions that prohibit foreigners from buying land; establish exclusive monopoly rights; do not provide for an effective government machinery; envisage an exclusive role of the so-called “core” or “constitutive” nations; do not contain strong enough human rights protection provisions; have no well-developed local government component.

Thus, as a rule, constitutions hamper the general philosophy of the Stability Pact. They also present a major obstacle for the economic and financial development of the region: constitutions support dubious custom arrangements, diverse payment and banking systems, low cooperation of capital markets, lack of other rules and treaties which facilitate mobility of capital and labor and thus establish sound foundations for economic, and hence political, co-existence.

Progress to Date:
This initiative is new but comes as a response to conditions laid down by the Stability Pact process. After the Kosovo war, the complex of international and bilateral agreements united under the Stability Pact function as quasi-constitutional arrangements region-wide. Some of these are signed, some are not. This network of agreements is in compliance with constitutional arrangements in the advanced democracies. Therefore they may well become a condition for launching a constitutional reform in the Balkan countries.

Thus, if changes and amendments to individual constitutions are made in accordance with the basics of the Stability Pact international agreements, three effects at least may be expected:

promotion of regional security; strengthening conditions for the rule of law; improvement of major economic institutions. The project can start immediately. Preliminary consultations with potential partners have been made.

Organizations Involved:
Think-tanks of core crisis-torn countries of SEE (Albania, B&H, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro) and experts from Yugoslavia; think-tanks of neighboring countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania) and senior experts from other countries; media and politicians in the region.

Lead Agency:
The Institute for Market Economics, Sofia
Dr. Krassen Stanchev
Strategic Partner:
The Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia,
Dr. Stefan Popov
OSF/COLPI Contact Person
Constantine Palikarski

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Funding Needs: This is a multi-year project

Total budget: $512,138
Soros commitment: $ 10,550
Other commitments: $ 5,000
Funding required: $496,588

Geographic Area: FR Yugoslavia

Area of Work: Justice and Human Rights

Working Table: WT1 - Human Rights and National Minorities WT3 – Justice and Home Affairs

Description:
The project will:

• Organize a Conference in September 2000 at the Irish Institute for Human Rights, National University of Ireland at Galway;
• Establish an Academy in which prospective team members can be trained in relevant skills; and,
• Develop a Rapid Response Team capability for the deployment of investigation teams composed of practitioners in skills relevant to the scenes of war crimes and human abuses.

The Conference will bring together a Council of Advisors (see listing below) to adopt a plan, establishing an Academy that will train and provide personnel to tribunals and institutions charged with investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity; and organizing Rapid Response Teams of investigators who can take the field quickly when a crisis occurs. Conference planning is already underway. However, without additional support, successful prosecutions against war criminals will be hampered by a need for trained investigators who can respond rapidly in a crisis, thereby placing the future success of international criminal law in jeopardy.

Background:
As John Ralston, Chief of Investigations for the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, explains, successful prosecutions of international crimes are at risk when experienced investigators are not readily available. Investigations falter due to fading memories and loss or destruction of physical evidence. Only by reaching a crime scene quickly, identifying and interviewing survivors and witnesses, preserving the scene and evidence, identifying suspects, and holding the ground for the larger effort that must inevitably follow, can the rights of survivors be protected and justice, through criminal tribunals, be delivered. The project will address both the need for rapid response to crises and well-trained investigators for the larger effort.

Throughout history, nations have struggled to codify acceptable limits to the conduct of war and to enumerate rights that belong to every person. While adoption of the Geneva Conventions and Protocols, creation of the United Nations, and promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have been mileposts in the struggle to establish the rule of law in international and civil conflicts, these laws are not self-executing.

The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia was one of the latest efforts to apply these laws to war participants. However, as the events in Kosovo taught us (Even with a Tribunal already in existence, due to their overload, it took some time before staff investigators could be assigned.), if international tribunals are to be successful, they must respond immediately when a crisis occurs. For international law to be accepted and effective, it must be guaranteed by a truly international effort. This can only be accomplished by developing international teams of experts available to respond quickly to a crisis by beginning the investigation to set the stage for a long-term investigation; and training personnel from all over the world to be proficient investigators of international war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Progress to Date:
The project is a new initiative from the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability, a non-profit corporation dedicated to working with survivors of human rights violations. Planning for the Conference to establish the Academy and Rapid Response Teams is already underway.

Individuals and Organizations Involved:
Justice Richard Goldstone, the first prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; Dr. M. Cherif Bassiouni of De Paul University’s International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences; William Schabas, Director of the Irish Institute of Human Rights and a former Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace; Lt.-Gen. Gerry McMahon, retired Chief of Staff of the Irish Defense Forces; Dr. Clyde Snow, leading forensic anthropologist and consultant; Dr. Naseer Aruri, Professor Emeritus in Political Science at the University of Massachusetts and a former member of the board of Amnesty International; Youk Chhang, Director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia; William Stuebner, Advisor to the Rule of Law Program, U.S. Institute of Peace; Diane Paul, consultant to Human Rights Watch; Professor Ralph Steinhardt of the George Washington University Law School; Heather Ryan, Liaison to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia from the Coalition for International Justice; Dr. Gerald Gray, Executive Director of the Center for Justice and Accountability; and Gordon Wasserman, advisor to the Commissioner of Police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Irish Institute for Human Rights
Coalition for International Justice

Lead Agency:
Center for Justice and Accountability
588 Sutter Street, Suite 433
San Francisco, California 94102
Tel: (415) 544 0444
Fax: (415) 544 0456
www.impunity.org

Soros Contact Person: Karoly Bard, COLPI

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