Peacebuilding And Police Reform In The New Europe Lessons From Kosovo

Abstract Police Reform in countries in transition is closely connected to peacekeeping and peacebuilding. The article discusses successes and failures, and the role of police, using Kosovo as an example. It is essential to know whether strategies, structures, and methods of military and police interventions are working, and we need to know whether the reform of administration, police and judiciary in the aftermath of an international intervention is sustainable. As peace and justice go together, the role of police reform in the context of the reform of the judiciary is discussed. There is an open clash between the mainstream international understanding of what a “just society” or a society, functioning under the “rule of law” is or should be on one side, and the local understanding of the members of a society, who survived different kinds of suppression and war over years or centuries, often by building up their own informal structures and their own rules of living together. Key words: Case study, Learning, Peace.