Abogados Civil
Resumen
Police Reform in countries in transition is closely connected to peacekeeping and peacebuilding. The article discusses successes and failures, and the role of police, using Kosovo as an example. It is essential to know whether strategies, structures, and methods of military and police interventions are working, and we need to know whether the reform of administration, police and judiciary in the aftermath of an international intervention is sustainable. As peace and justice go together, the role of police reform in the context of the reform of the judiciary is discussed. There is an open clash between the mainstream international understanding of what a just society or a society, functioning under the rule of law is or should be on one side, and the local understanding of the members of a society, who survived different kinds of suppression and war over years or centuries, often by building up their own informal structures and their own rules of living together. In Kosovo, nine years of a UN international protectorate has achieved remarkably little. The country is called UNMIKISTAN , and one may find quotes like We came, saw and failed (Zaremba 2007), referring to those who came as experts for UN, OSCE, EU or NGO´s. One reason for the failure is, that neither the military (KFOR), nor the international police force (UNMIK CIVPOL) or the UN-administration have been prepared in a proper way for their mission, resulting in disadvantages and bad examples for locals. The organization of administration, as the organization of the reform of public institutions and judiciary in Kosovo was lacking basic social and ethnographic knowledge of the country and the Kosovo society. This resulted in at least partly practising peacekeeping as tourism (Sion 2008) and spending more money for international experts and administration than for supporting the country. In 2008, more than nine years after the UN took over responsibility for the country, the legal system is still not working properly and the country is in a disastrous social and economic situation. Huge, ineffective reconstruction programs and a body of neo-colonial administrators become the focus of local resentment. 53 separate national police units were under UN-umbrella at the beginning practising their own brand of law and order, while at the same time preaching the gospel of universal standards. Police officers or civil workers, arriving in Kosovo with very best intentions, often got frustrated by the burden of UN- or OSCE-administration. Others came to Kosovo as mission addicts , spending more time in networking and organizing their next mission than taking care of their official and well paid task. Missing cooperation within the international organizations and between these organizations and NGO´s resulted in mismanagement and structures of keeping the own organization running while paying no attention to the work of others. To reform public institutions demands more than flying in internationals and imposing new laws or regulations. Civilizing security in a country in transition also needs a strong theoretical background. By using Clifford Shearing´s idea of Nodal Security , the article discusses possibilities to conceptualize and promote security as a local public good: Internationals help to establish the necessary nodals and networks.
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Extracto
Peacebuilding and Police Reform in the New Europe: Lessons from Kosovo
Introduction
In November 2007, three months before Kosovo declared independence, the European Commission Progress Report on Kosovo concluded that in Kosovo very little progress has been achieved and that a multi-ethnic country seems to be a far removed possibility (European Commission 2007). The report stated that the focus on standards before status (independence of Kosovo) has significantly delayed reform efforts. Some former progress has been followed by the lack of capacity to carry out and implement laws. Civil servants are - so the EU report - still vulnerable to political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism: corruption is still prevalent, undermining a proper functioning of the institutions in Kosovo . The conclusion of the report is that overall, Kosovo's public administration remains weak and inefficient . Some progress has been made in reforming public administration, but these reforms are at an early stage . The same observation can be applied to the judicial system, which is still fragile, and the execution of judgement remains insufficient. There is also a discrepancy between the wishes and aspirations of the people of Kosovo, and the ambitions of the government and leaders of the political parties. The focus on status had the effect of undermining all the important economic and social issues. Considering that human rights were not respected under the supervision of UNMIK and KFOR (examples are the violent demonstrations in March 2004 and February 2007), how can we expect that the situation will change after Kosovo has declared independence? And what is or might be in fact the supervised independence , mentioned by EU and UN, who (in summer 2008) are still negotiating how the future assistance for the country should be organized? Police Reform in countries in transition is closely connected to what is called peacekeeping or peacebuildung . William Smith (2007) has shown, using Jürgen Habermas´s reflections on Kosovo and Iraq, that the past decade has witnessed the emergence of numerous cosmopolitan theories of humanitarian military intervention. These theories anticipate a more cosmopolitan future, where interventions will be authorized by new cosmopolitan institutions and carried out by reformed cosmopolitan military and police. But as long as we do not have such 'cosmopolitan regimes', capable of carrying out militarized 'police actions' (Habermas 2003), we need to know whether the already existing strategies, structures, and methods of military and police activities in the aftermath of an international intervention are working. As long as we do not have functioning supranational institutions, capable of enforcing human rights, or multi-layered institutions and networks of global governance, we need to realize that we are on a transitional stage between international and cosmopolitan law (Habermas 1998). And as long as we have to trust in military interventions and military force to advance humanitarian goals, we need to discuss the role of police forces in this context. To decide whether an intervention is or might be justified by whatever de iure or de facto reason, it is necessary to find out whether: · The military intervention was successful in terms of ending what was the reason for the intervention (e.g. ethnic cleansing, genocide, crimes against or violation of humanities etc.); · The after-care of the military intervention, the establishment of rule of law, of a functioning police, judiciary, and administration, was organized in such a way, that a possible success by the former intervention will be secured, stabilized and sustainable in a longer run. To answer these questions, an evaluation of both the intervention and the after-care is necessary. But what are the criteria for such an evaluation? When do we judge an intervention as successful , when the after-care? Is Enlightenment the difference? Before trying to explain what happened in Kosovo and what are the reasons why the world failed in Kosovo (King and Mason 2006), it is necessary to comment on what might make it so difficult to understand what was and is still happening on the Balkans. Some people say that the difference between Serbia and Western States is the denial of the enlightenment . Serbian politicians - that´s how they argue - aim at the collective rights of their nation, whilst the western understanding focuses at the individual rights of people (Rathfelder 2008). This is the supposed reason, why human rights as individual rights are not accepted, and why for Serbs the centre of consideration is the nation or the peoples (`narod´ in Serb language). Consequently, they reject the idea of rule of law in a western understanding, as they reject the idea of individualisation of gu...Ver el contenido completo de este documento
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