7 December 2012 - Representatives of various police services in Guinea-Bissau issued a body of recommendations aimed at enhancing their effectiveness at the end of a seminar on criminal law organized on 4-5 December by the Judicial Police in collaboration with the UN Integrated Office for Peace-building in Guinea Bissau, UNIOGBIS.

The seminar encompassed a series of lectures designed to enhance participants' knowledge of how criminal competencies are distributed and to develop a discussion forum on the coordination mechanisms needed to guarantee top-quality investigation and security services
The some 45 participants stressed the need for strengthening cooperation between the organs of the police and the judiciary. They also called for the creation of conditions for fluid communication between the various organs of the Criminal Police, which include the Judicial Police, Public Order Police, National Guard and Interpol.

To this end, they suggested appointing focal points in each criminal police organ, fostering the exchange of information and contacts among them, and making the databases of the Criminal Police uniform so as to enable the appropriate filtering of information. Other recommendations included engaging in joint policing actions so as to economize on the resources mobilized for investigations.

Speaking on the opening day of the seminar, Attorney General Abdu Mane explained that ongoing technical and legal training activities were aimed at improving the skills, attitudes and behaviour of officers of the Criminal Police through the dissemination of good investigation management practices. "Unfortunately, there has been [...] some competition in terms of jurisdiction between the public order police, the judicial police and the national guard," he said. "Sometimes, this is detrimental to investigations. Jurisdiction is not presumed, it must be defined by law".

The seminar fell within the framework of initiatives supported by UNIOGBIS with a view to promoting the rule of law in Guinea-Bissau.

"These events, for us, are very important because they contribute to a strategy that was defined by the Guinean authorities and approved in 2006 in the headquarters of the National Police," Antero Lopes, Chief of UNIOGBIS' Security Sector Reform (SSR) Division, explained at the seminar. "It's a national plan for defense, security and justice reforms that favors the empowerment of individuals and their institutions through training."

"Training is an action of joint responsibility of the individual and the institution, of Guinea-Bissau and its international partners. Therefore, it is a duty that we try to fulfill as partners of Guinea-Bissau, since the UN is an organization of which Guinea Bissau is a part," Lopes added.