In October 2014, LEAHN Regional Co-ordinator Alex Zelichenko conducted training in Minsk, Republic of Belarus on harm reduction. Specifically, the goal of the training was to learn key ingredients for enhancing partnerships between law enforcement agents and civil society organisations so that both can increase access to harm reduction services and increase public safety.
The workshops was guided by three main objectives as follows:
1) To sensitise 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;
2) To build capacity of the CSOs to advocate with LEAs to ensure greater access of people who used drugs to harm reduction services;
3) To create a space for LEAs and CSOs to share respective positions, concerns and ideas for enhancing future collaboration.
Lessons learned and recommendations:
1. This seminar was one of the first training sessions for the mixed group of trainees – LEA, medical doctors and CSOs. It has been a very valuable experience of establishing contacts between governmental and non-governmental structures. In two days of extensive joint sessions we had an obvious progress from defensive detachment to establishing the dialogue and laying the initial corner stones for possible future cooperation.
2. The seminar confirmed the importance of personal contacts and face-to-face dialogue for establishing the positive social ties and facilitating the future cooperation. In this context, it is very important to draft and distribute the list of seminar participants including personal contact information.
3. Positive results of the seminar proved that the chosen approach to the training group forming – to have a mixed group of trainees – is reasonable and works well. I would recommend to use the same approach for further training events.
4. In future I would recommend to select “advanced” police officers and penitentiary service personnel – candidates for ToT (training of trainers), so, after the course completion, they could run the high quality field training sessions.