Workshop on Programme Development: "Citizen Control of Public Safety Action"

Fragile countries with uneven political developments, extroverted and poorly redistributive economies despite strong growth potential, Senegal, Gambia and Guinea-Bissau face hybrid insecurities and diverse known and emerging threats. These are particularly acute in cross-border areas and spread from one country to another, playing on weaknesses of all kinds. Whether it is drug trafficking, trafficking in persons (especially children, women and migrants), the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, environmental crimes, terrorism, etc., we are dealing with cross-cutting and common issues that make multilateral cooperation the sine qua non for efficient treatment. Indeed, taken in isolation, these three countries are struggling to resolve these issues effectively and sustainably. Thus, the workshop aimed to set up a group of experts to produce a relevant, useful and innovative research programme centred on citizen control of public security action in the Senegalese region.

This meeting was attended by some thirty experts from Senegal, Gambia, Morocco, Tunisia and France. The latter were representatives of non-state and international institutions (NGOs and CSOs), members of the defence and security forces, as well as thematic experts and academics. They discussed and shared their experiences on the common security challenges facing these three countries, with a focus on strengthening the citizen dimension of security sector governance.

The debates that followed allowed for constructive and fruitful exchanges. Indeed, among the recommendations, the following were highlighted:

• The need for a global understanding of the diversity of new, complex and transnational threats
• The concrete implementation, from a bottom-up approach, of the principles of participation, inclusion and evaluation by civil society involved in democratic governance.
• Mobilization of a systemic approach that ranges from identifying and mapping threats, standards, processes and institutions to assessing the effectiveness of the response, taking into account the multi-stakeholder and multi-level dimensions of public security action.
• Knowledge production, information sharing and recommendations for decision-makers that are based on evidence gathered in the field to serve as a decision-making tool and knowledge dissemination.
• The establishment, through citizen control, of an instrument focused on the protection of individuals and communities, as well as on the early prevention of threats, but also of sources of inequality and vulnerability.