Dakar Declaration

SAFETY FOR ALL... EQUALLY!

Sub-regional Seminar on Community Safety and Delinquency Prevention
Dakar, January 20-23, 2004


FINAL DECLARATION

Recalling the Declarations of the Johannesburg 1998, Durban 2003 and Yaoundé (Africités) 2003 conferences on the co-production of community safety and delinquency prevention;

Noting that Safer Cities Programs as well as integrated delinquency prevention and community safety initiatives have been carried out successfully in African cities such as Abidjan, Bamako and Yaoundé under the aegis of UN-HABITAT, in cooperation with the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime and the European Forum for Urban Safety;

Noting also that Senegal is pursuing a wide-ranging decentralization program, paired with police reform and the implementation of houses of justice;

Bearing in mind that Senegalese authorities have demonstrated their commitment to decentralize power through the empowerment of local authorities and of civil organisations in order to improve governance and services; and

Mindful of the goals of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and of the need to achieve sustainable development in African countries;

The participants of the sub-regional seminar in Dakar:

1. Acknowledge that delinquency and insecurity are real problems with negative impacts on quality of life, social cohesion and community and national development;

2. Recognize that these problems are worsening and that they have local, national and international ramifications;

3. Recall that police and judicial responses must be paired with vigorous preventive measures;
4. Affirm that the efficiency and synergy of preventive, police and judiciary measures depends on full cooperation between political, institutional and civil stakeholders;

5. Reaffirm the importance of civil society as an essential partner in the co-production of safety and prevention;

6. Emphasize that this cooperation must be implemented at all levels of State governance, but that responses to local delinquency and insecurity problems must be developed at the local level, in cooperation with local authorities, with the support of national governments; and

7. Witness with great satisfaction the sharing and utilisation of other countries’ experiences to foster the development of local initiatives.


Therefore, we recommend:

1. Creating a network of Senegalese cities for delinquency prevention and community safety;
2. Implementing the necessary tools to share experience in delinquency prevention between cities of different countries, especially between African cities that have developed Safer Cities programs through a renewed African Forum for Urban Safety, European cities participating in the European Forum for Urban Safety, and Canadian cities that are members of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities;
3. Involving Senegalese cities, especially the city of Saint-Louis, in a Safer Cities program in cooperation with UN-HABITAT in order to foster sustainable community development;
4. Developing and implementing an action plan on safety and delinquency prevention for the French-speaking world in cooperation with the Agence intergouvernementale de la francophonie;
5. Urging the governments and city forums for urban safety in Africa to become members of the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime.