Improving Communication through Dialogue
Prosecution, law enforcement and local team players

HSF

A dialogue on the communication in relation to the handling of environmental crimes and of cases involving children in conflict with the law (CICL) was conducted in Cagayan de Oro City last 26 September 2019.  The one-day activity was participated in by prosecutors and police investigators from the Province of Misamis Oriental and the Cities of Cagayan de Oro, El Salvador and Gingoog.  To enable a deeper discussion and exchange, local social welfare officers as well as representatives of the Provincial Environment and Natural Resource Office (PENRO) were invited to join.

The activity provided an opportunity for the participants to openly share experiences, sentiments and points of view in a language or dialect that they felt comfortable expressing themselves in.  More importantly, the discussions led to some clarifications and helped to improve communication between and amongst them.

Furthermore, the feedback from the participants as well as their disposition during the dialogue clearly demonstrated the positive effect that the preceding dialogue activity, held on 25 July 2019, had on the working relationship amongst the participants -- the prosecutors, the police investigators and the social welfare officers.

Since the launching dialogue in September 2017, this was the sixth amongst those in the series of twenty-four activities that was devoted to participants from the City of Cagayan de Oro that later on included those from the Province of Misamis Oriental and the Cities of El Salvador and of Gingoog.  It was held as a sequel to the previous dialogue activity that focused on cases involving children in conflict with the law (CICL), in consideration for the comments from several participants that more time was needed to sufficiently discuss issues and concerns.

HSF

In contrast with the strained atmosphere that prevailed during the previous activity, particularly between the police investigators and social welfare officers from the Cagayan de Oro City, during this dialogue activity, the same participants were observed to be comfortably sharing one table and calmly interacting with one another, talking about their experiences and sentiments on the matters discussed.

New to the activity is the participation of PENRO representatives, who helped to shed light on the cases filed with the prosecutors’ offices that involved environmental crimes, as these have hitherto been one source of misunderstandings and issues in the work of the prosecutors and of the police investigators as well as of the PENRO officers.  During the intercourse, issues arose that could only be responded to by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and the City Environment and Natural Resources Office.  Thus, it was suggested that representatives from the respective offices be invited to the next dialogue activity on the same topic.

The activity was organised by the Department of Justice-National Prosecution Service with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation as part of the partnership between the two organisations on the program, “Dialogue between Prosecutors and Police Investigators from the Northern Mindanao Region,” which began in 2017.