THE CASE OF HENRY DOWA UNCIVPOL states in its Selection Standards and Training Guidelines (‘the Guidelines’) “The important role and complex responsibilities of UNCIVPOL monitors in current missions demand that only the best-suited police officers from the Member States are deployed as monitors.”66 According to the Guidelines, the Benchmark Selection Standards include: “Personal and Professional Integrity. Any police officer volunteering for service as a UNCIVPOL monitor must have exemplary personal and professional integrity. This implies an international outlook, independence from direction from governments and organisations external to the United Nations and both the knowledge of and ability to act impartially while on mission.”67 It would appear that DPKO’s main concern is the conduct and behaviour of UN police officers whilst on UN duty, as opposed to what they did (and do) in the Member State from whence they came. This is understandable. Nevertheless, police officers from a Member State who have acted with brutality and impunity at home are not the sort of persons who ought to be part of any UN police force abroad. This is so obviously a basic matter of principle that there should be no need to even raise it, and yet the Dowa case illustrates the fundamental problems which can arise. The question is what steps, if any, can be taken to prevent this sort of problem from recurring? There is, of course, the much wider problem of how to overcome domestic impunity in Member States where human rights violations by the police, including torture, are endemic and condoned. The development of international criminal law, including CAT, is part of the solution. The specific issue for DPKO, though, in the case of Zimbabwe and similar countries where gross and systematic human rights violations are taking place, is whether it is possible to prevent police torturers finding their way into UNCIVPOL.68 The most radical solution would be to stop drawing UN police officers from such Member States altogether. However, until such time as Zimbabwe (for example) has become the subject of some form of official UN sanctions, there is nothing to stop it offering personnel, and it would be diplomatically impossible and inconsistent with the functions of the UN for DPKO to ‘blacklist’ it in the absence of such sanctions. The practical issue, therefore, given the reality of police officers from Zimbabwe and similar countries joining UNCIVPOL, is whether any sort of vetting procedure can be instituted. At the moment it appears that there are no initial vetting procedures at all, and that effectively everything is left to each Member State to put forward whomsoever it wishes.69 What DPKO lays down in the Guidelines are the basic necessary practical and 66 United Nations Selection Standards and Training Guidelines for UNCIVPOL, http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/training/training/training_material/cdrom/civilian_police/selstand_civpol/selst and_civpol.pdf The various documents in the Guidelines are said not to constitute official UN policy. 67 Ibid. 68 Zimbabwe is obviously and by no means the only culprit. Numerous other Member State governments effectively condone torture by the police; see for example: Reparations for Torture: A Survey of Law and Practice in Thirty Selected Countries (loc sit). 69 On 3 November 2003 REDRESS wrote to UNMIK raising, inter alia, the following: “It is our understanding that when Zimbabwe is asked to send officers to Kosovo and elsewhere the only official requirement from 15