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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 10/05
Police Reform in Post Conflict Societies: What We Know and What We Still Need to Know
William O'Neill
April 2005
Abstract
Police reform is one of the most important and complex challenges in any environment. It is particularly challenging, however, in post-conflict situations where the police have often perpetrated serious human rights violations. Often cut off from the populations they are meant to serve and protect, many operate more like military contingents than public security officers. Transforming such police forces into rights-respecting police services that simultaneously provide protection and fight crime has challenged local and international reformers.
Many United Nations (UN) departments and agencies—in particular the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)—have developed extensive experience in police reform over the past fifteen years in various peace operations, starting in Namibia in 1989. The UN has helped to reform or create new police forces in El Salvador, Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, East Timor (now known as Timor-Leste), Rwanda, Croatia, Georgia/Abkhazia, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Guatemala, Angola, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
