2.2 TNTD/Strategic Police Matters Unit Background “The OSCE Secretariat ensures the co-ordination of all OSCE police-related activities and ensures that they are in line with the relevant mandates and do not overlap. The Transnational Threats Department’s Strategic Police Matters Unit (TNT/SPMU), which was set up to improve the capacity of participating States to address threats posed by criminal activity and to assist them in upholding the rule of law, serves as the main focal point in this regard.” - PC.DEC/1049, article 22. The primary role of TNTD/SPMU is to provide support to law enforcement agencies of participating States in addressing threats posed by criminal activity through needs assessments, capacity building, institution-building, training and evaluation. The TNTD/SPMU’s long-term goals aim to provide a democratic vision of policing for the entire OSCE region and put that vision to work by assisting OSCE participating States in police capacity and institution-building and improving police performance within the broader objective of strengthening national criminal justice systems. The vision guides capacity building aimed at creating competence to tackle transnational threats, including those emanating from organized crime and terrorism. TNTD/SPMU explores every opportunity to also include participants from Partners for Co-operation in its capacity building events. In the year 2014, regional activities and events were a special focus, as will be continued in 2015. SPMU had numerous visits throughout 2014 from individuals and groups from diverse academic institutions, national authorities, international organizations, OSCE delegations, field operations and OSCE institutions wishing to obtain information about the Unit’s structure and activities. TNTD/SPMU welcomes every opportunity to raise awareness and strengthen its network and explores every opportunity to receive interested parties to discuss issues related to the Unit’s mandate and activities. Throughout the year, the Head of the Unit and his staff held high-level meetings with Ministers of Interior and their Deputies, Directors of Departments and the Heads/Directors of Police and Police Academies of numerous participating States to strengthen the SPMU’s network of contacts and to discuss OSCE’s assistance to police reform and development as well as the fight against organized transnational crime TNTD/SPMU strived for maximum programmatic co-ordination of its activities among the OSCE executive structures and with international and regional organizations and NGOs in order to avoid duplications and to provide added value. The Unit co-operated with other partners in organizing a number of needs assessments, workshops, conferences, meetings and training events, described in this document. On 16-17 June 2014, TNTD/SPMU organized the Annual Meeting of the Heads of Law Enforcement Departments of the OSCE field operations in Vienna. The meeting, attended by 15 Heads of Law Enforcement Departments, discussed human resources requirements, better interaction between field operations and Delegations and the tenth anniversary of the OSCE Gender Action Plan. Field operations presented threat assessments regarding their hosting countries and pointed to current challenges regarding organized and transnational crime in their respective areas. In addition, possible future co-operation and collaboration between field operations to address transnational threats was discussed. It was proposed that more field operations should be given opportunities to present their activities to OSCE Delegations, for example to the Security Committee. 23