Training: Online Working Group Meetings, September 2020 – April 2021

Due to covid-19 restrictions, three regional training courses were converted into online working group meetings. Each of them included participation of nine representatives from different oversight actors from Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia, who met several times online and discussed a topic pertaining to security sector oversight. Each working group trajectory resulted in a joint policy brief, which offered input to local and international policy communities. The online gatherings preceding the delivery of the policy briefs combined elements of training by CESS and external instructors, with a joint research effort. Read more here

Training: In-country Regional Training Courses, 2022

Two in-person regional training courses will be organized in South-East Europe for mixed groups of practitioners from Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. Each event will consist of interactive training sessions on shared challenges in oversight for participating practitioners, followed by training-of-training workshops for a small group of selected oversight representatives that have a clear interest in improving their didactical training skills and opportunities to employ these newly gained skills in their professional life.

Training: Online National Training Courses, April – September 2021

Because covid-19 travel and meeting restrictions persisted well into 2021, CESS replaced half of the planned national training courses to online national training courses. This allowed CESS and partners to continue working on the DECOS project short-term and maintain the momentum created by the first series of regional online activities. The eight online national training courses consisted of various online contact moments over a two-week period, including interactive training elements and simulations. Three online training courses each were organized for Kosovars and Albanians and two for Macedonians. Topics of specific interest were ‘democratic oversight of the security sector’ and ‘post-legislative scrutiny’ and ‘oversight of the law enforcement sector’. Read more here

Training: In-country National Training Courses, October 2021 – Ongoing

The second half of 16 planned national training courses will be held in-country again, from October 2021 onwards. The topics of the in-country training courses are the same as for the online training courses. The group we will work with is however different than the groups we worked with in the online training courses. The working approach is of course more intense than online, because we have the group together for several days days in a row, which enables us to work more intensively with our trainees.

Coaching:

Online workshop on intelligence oversight Kosovo, 27 October 2020
This first coaching meeting was held online and addressed a concrete question from the intelligence oversight committee in the Kosovar Assembly: how could intelligence oversight strengthen? To answer this question the members of the committee wanted to review best practices from other countries, to see how intelligence oversight is arranged there. CESS addressed this need by bringing in a senior advisor of the Dutch parliamentary intelligence oversight committee.

Coaching Kosovo: Working visit former IGK Dutch Armed Forces to Kosovo, November 2021
In Kosovo a new law on the Military Ombudsman was under scrutiny in the autumn of 2021. The defence committee in Parliament indicated that they were looking for examples from EU countries on how this practice was arranged elsewhere. That is why we brought in the former Inspector-General of the Dutch Armed Forces to share experiences from the Netherlands.