Montenegro Civic Education Project

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The United States works closely with Montenegro to strengthen law enforcement capabilities, particularly to counter transnational crime, and to speed rule of law reforms, which are key to Montenegro’s EU accession. INL efforts in Montenegro focus on improving rule of law reform, including increasing identification and prosecution of high-level corruption, and the fight against organized crime. As a part of its rule of law reform efforts, INL has provided extensive support and assistance to the major prosecutorial and anti-corruption bodies, as well as relevant ministries, to improve their transparency, efficacy, and legitimacy, and to strengthen their relationships with the public. This support has ranged from bringing in U.S. experts to offer specialized trainings for members of the prosecution to donations to the local shelter for victims of human trafficking. INL also has several grants researching and improving access to information on organized crime and extremism. However, INL activities at present in Montenegro do not include specific efforts to improve protection of youth or to improve perceptions of law enforcement or rule of law professionals at the community level. The selected project would help address this gap. While U.S. law-enforcement assistance is focused mainly on developing investigative capacities, the National Police Directorate (NPD) has studied community policing and seeks to implement it in their general operations.  Current NPD leadership supports integration of community policing as a tenet of the NPD’s Plan for Development, which is currently under development. To support further progress in Montenegro, the U.S. Department of State has allocated $550,000 USD for a project to promote civic education in local Montenegrin communities through classroom instruction and community-based workshops involving law enforcement and other rule of law professionals, with the end goal of building trust between community members and law enforcement professionals, to counteract growing insecurity. INL is looking for creative and proactive community-based models that focus on bringing Montenegrin communities, law enforcement and other rule of law professionals together in schools and in the wider community. All activities should be adapted to the local context. The grantee will partner with a limited number of schools during the pilot phase and expand to additional schools over time.

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