Policing assistance within an international mission environment is widely recognised as being complex and fraught with challenges. Within security sector reform programmes, policing is a central pillar, encompassing a range of activities that have moved beyond monitoring of local police organisations to reforming, rebuilding, restructuring and redeveloping. There is broad recognition of the need to better understand the challenges faced by police practitioners within this context. Recent and ongoing initiatives by international organisations including the United Nations and the European Union are working towards the development of mission ‘best practice’ through a ‘lessons-to-be-learned’ approach and transfer into guidance material.
This report is a collection of nine practitioner-led essays including two essays on South Sudan. The report is based on a workshop that took place in 2017. The aim of the workshop has been to spark further discussions of how and why practitioners operate within a mission in the way that they do, how they meet the challenges of a mission that is so far removed from their home policing environments and may remove them from their comfort zones. It is hoped that this output will make a positive contribution to the development of current best practice for use by police practitioners when deploying to an international environment, and raise the profile of international policing assistance.