South Asian Regional Roundtable on Policing in Delhi

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) is organising a two day South Asian Regional Roundtable on Policing in Qutab Hotel, Shahid Jeet Singh Marg, New Delhi 110017 on 31October-1st November, 2009. This regional roundtable brings together police officials, civil society organisations, and academics from Netherlands , South Africa as well as from Pakistan , Sri Lanka , Bangladesh and India .

The focus of this regional roundtable will be on how civil society organisations (CSOs) can usefully intervene to improve policing in their home jurisdictions respectively as the politicians in South Asia have failed to demonstrate the will to improve law enforcement.

The key note speakers and participants who will be attending the conference and who could be interviewed are Mrs Maja Daruwala , Director CHRI; BG Verghese, Eminent Journalist and member of Executive Committee, CHRI, Prakash Singh, former cop and petitioner in the Public Interest Litigation that led to the Supreme Court's landmark judgement on police reforms, Julio Ribeiro, former cop; Nurul Huda (former IGP of Bangladesh Police); ASM Shahjahan (former IGP of Bangladesh Police); J.C. Weliamuna; Executive Director, Transparency International, Sri Lanka; I.A. Rehman; Director, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Navaz Kotwal, Coordinator, Police Reforms Programme, CHRI; Sanjay Patil, Consultant, South Police Reforms Programme, CHRI; Anneke Osse, Manager, Police and Human Rights Programme, Amnesty International; Netherlands; Katrin Bannach, Programme Manager, Friedrich Naumann Foundation; Mr Leonard Gill, Regional Delegate for relations with Police Forces, International Committee for the Red Cross; Mr Sean Tait, Coordinator African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum and Mr Sharfuddin Memon, Chair Citizen-Police Liaison Committee, Karachi, Pakistan.

Since the roundtable is meant to elicit concrete actions that CSOs can undertake to better policing in their respective countries, the meeting would discuss the key obstacles to police reform and assess what CSOs can do to overcome those impediments; learn from jurisdictions where reform has been implemented and sustained; formulate ways for CSOs to effect police reform in home jurisdictions with the tools, resources and capacity in their possession; identify allies within government, police and bureaucracy on the issue of better policing as well as discuss the creation of a network to work on police reforms from a regional perspective.

The bulk of the two days will be spent on critically examining and analysing 3 key aspects of police reform that can be influenced by CSO intervention. The first session will examine how CSOs can improve police professionalism.

This session will explore what sort of training CSOs can provide to police so that they better safeguard human rights and how benchmarks can be used by CSOs to monitor police reforms.

The second session will identify ways in which CSOs can monitor, oversee and review police misconduct. This session will seek to learn from oversight initiatives that have been successful and determine if such experiences can be imported to South Asia .

The third session will explore various community policing initiatives that have been able to improve police performance and have successfully facilitated a better relationship between the police and CSOs. The fourth session will discuss ways to create a network of like-minded individuals and organisations that wish to work on the issue of police reform from a regional perspective.(EOM)