4.6 Mission to Skopje Background The work of the Police Development Unit (PDU) of the OSCE Mission to Skopje (the Mission) is based on the Mission’s original mandate23 on policing of 1992 and on the OSCE Ministerial Council and PC decisions stemming from the Ohrid Framework Agreement (OFA) in 2001. According to the provisions in Annex C of the OFA, the Mission was called to assist in a number of specific areas, which were added to the initial mandate. They included the recruitment and training of 1,000 new police cadets from non-majority communities as well as a phased and co-ordinated redeployment of the national police personnel to the former crisis areas. Following the completion of the above task, the Mission’s Police Development Unit has been delivering and facilitating police training, supporting the development of a national Community Policing Programme and providing expertise at the policy-planning level. Since March 2013, the Department of Public Safety and Community Outreach (PSCOD) has been operative with the aim of increasing internal co-ordination and effectiveness in the Mission’s early warning function. The Department includes the Police Development Unit (the PDU, formerly the PD Department) and the Monitoring Unit (MU) - a unit formerly within the Head of Mission Department. By moving these two pillars together, the Mission grouped all security-related activities under common supervision while maintaining their independent networks and specific functions. Common co-ordination was meant to ensure a prompt field response in critical situations in which full countrywide field coverage is needed. The PDU remained committed to fulfilling these overall security/early warning tasks through addressing outstanding issues mainly related to Annex C, Paragraph 5.3 of the OFA. This included providing assistance to police reform as it relates to the implementation of the Law on Internal Affairs (LoIA) and its by-laws.24 In line with the OSCE’s efforts in addressing emerging transnational threats, the PDU concentrated its efforts in 2014 on the delivery of training and expertise in the fields of combating organized crime and terrorism, as well as improving border security management. In 2014, the activities of the PDU were divided into three main programmatic fields: Police Reform: • Co-ordinating with the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MoIA) in the further implementation of the new LoIA, supporting the improvement of the Police Human Resources Management and Development System; • Providing assistance to the Sectors of Internal Affairs and Regional Centres for Border Affairs to formulate and implement Regional Prevention Action Plans (RPAPs) for the prevention of crimes and inter-ethnic incidents and for improving the overall operational capacities of the police field structures; 23 24 106 The original mandate called on the Mission “to monitor developments along the border with Serbia and in other areas which may suffer from spillover of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, in order to promote respect for territorial integrity and the maintenance of peace, stability and security; and to help prevent possible conflict in the region”. See CSCE Committee of Senior Officials, Mandate. Articles of Understanding Concerning CSCE Spillover Monitor Mission to Skopje, 12 August 1992, p. 1. A new Law on Internal Affairs was drafted in 2013 and adopted in March 2014. In addition to the new LoIA, in 2014 the Government passed the Law on Administrative Clerks, which covers the status, classification, employment, promotion, professional training, management of effects and other issues related to the employment of administrative clerks, and the new Law on Employees in the Public Sector, which covers the general principles, classification of jobs, records, types of employment, general rights, duties and responsibilities, mobility and other general issues of public sector employees. Both laws greatly affect the work of the MoIA employees, including the police.