LEA and CSO; a needed and possible partnership Enhancing Partnerships between Law Enforcement and Civil Society Organizations in the context of Drug Use and HIV: Sensitization Workshop Aleksandr Zelichenko | Police Colonel (ret.), PhD

The Rationale Police can be the best friend and the worst enemy of Harm Reduction. This was a main reason to introduce training program for police – to learn tolerance. The fact that UNDCP – most authoritative for Law Enforcement structures UN agency – took the lead of this teaching raised the significance of our efforts on incomparably high level.

Manual and Workshops In 2013, UNODC commissioned an HIV Prevention Global Training Manual for Law Enforcement Agencies which supposed to be made available to countries this year. Additionally, UNODC also organized two-day workshop in 8 high priority countries (Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Myanmar, Philippines, India, Tanzania - Zanzibar targeting LEA and CSOs.

Workshops One of the main ideas of the workshop is discussion the need for partnerships between LEAs and CSOs in the context on HIV among Key Affected Populations. The general idea was to develop a standard workshop (based on the Manual), tailor it to the local situations of the high priority countries and deliver the workshops. And countries have been encouraged to adapt and incorporate the Manual into the national training curriculum for the law enforcement officials.

My region is Central Asia - Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan. Although the training outline generally similar for all 8 countries, it became obvious that 3 high priority countries of CA region are on the different levels of acceptance of Harm Reduction philosophy, theory and practice and its role in HIV prevention. Moreover, understanding of roles of civil society organizations and law enforcement agencies in HIV prevention, readiness of SCOs and LEA to cooperate and to take a task to build and scale up this partnership, and even the acceptance of the idea of this partnership - the level of commitment to all these ideas varied from country to country in the very wide range. Workshops in CA region

To learn the opportunities and key ingredients for enhancing partnerships between LEAs and CSOs that can both increase access to harm reduction services and increase public safety Goal of the training:

Three objectives of the training: To sensitize law enforcement officials about harm reduction services in the context of HIV and how law enforcement practices can influence (positively or negatively), the access of people who use drugs to harm reduction services; To build capacity of the CSOs to advocate with LEAs to ensure greater access of people who used drugs to harm reduction services; To create a space for LEAs and CSOs to share respective positions, concerns and ideas for enhancing future collaboration

From the very beginning we introduced an idea to have mixed training groups, and ideally - to have the equal number of participants representing LEA and CSOs. Also, we invited Penitentiary service personnel and Ministry of Health engaged with HIV and drug-related problems, so they could make their input into discussion, especially when we will discuss specifics of the harm reduction programs implementing in their countries.

While Kyrgyzstan has practiced these mixed- group trainings during few recent years, for many police officers from Kazakhstan and Tajikistan it was their first time round, and they found this experience to be very fruitful and promising. Building on the information collected during preparation period and lessons learned from the workshop, we developed number of country- specific recommendations. Lessons learned