SECURITY FORCES In November 2009, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), Francopol, the IBCR and a dozen police and gendarmerie academies from French-speaking Africa met in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The objective of this meeting was to raise participants’ awareness of children’s rights and the principle of the best interest of the child in the context of police practice. At this conference, participants realised that while police forces were familiar
with the vocabulary associated with children’s rights, they were less clear on the actual meaning of these terms and how to apply the concepts they represented. Consequently, police officers were not entirely committed to the principles behind the terms. The situation is partly due to the lack of training on children’s rights. Training is irregular, short in duration and not evaluated. It doesn’t lead to child-friendly practices in the professional practice of police and gendarmerie officers.
› Regional workshops and specialist meetings After collecting these observations, the three organisations furthered the process by holding a regional workshop in Cotonou, Benin, in December 2010. It was attended by decision makers and educators from a dozen countries, who together analysed the child rights training framework for security forces. This analysis led to the development of a core competency reference framework for security forces. The document was validated in 2011 by specialists from the field (psychologists, security personnel, United Nations representatives, civil society representatives and public authorities) and adopted that same year by approximately 60 police and gendarmerie training schools.
The resulting reference document was also produced as a detailed report and made publicly available so that the core child-rights competencies could be more readily used to develop training programmes for security forces in the concerned countries. Since then, it has informed the work of the IBCR and various other international organisations specialising in promoting children’s rights within juvenile justice and child protection systems. This reflection on the core competencies for security forces was the first step in a series of similar consultations in other areas of child protection. Furthermore, competency-based development has become fundamental to the IBCR’s work.
CORE COMPETENCIES FOR SECURITY FORCES
1|
Knowledge, promotion and implementation of children’s rights
2 | Knowledge and application of the rules of ethics and professional conduct
3 | Knowledge of children 4 | Interaction and communication with children, their families and communities
5 | Collaboration with all formal and informal stakeholders towards a coordinated intervention
6 | Efficient use of working tools adapted to children
- 16 -
