One of the principal demands of the Panamanian government since the start of the programme has been strengthening of the coordination between stakeholders involved in violence prevention themes, given the number of initiatives in this area that fail to have an impact due to lack of a coordination mechanism.

On 20th January, EUROsociAL held working meetings in Panama with the aim of presenting and validating a proposal to organise central-local levels of government around prevention themes. The document presented was based on experiences generated in Europe (France, the United Kingdom, Italy and Belgium) and the work carried out throughout 2013 (meetings, interviews and workshops) with the stakeholders in the violence-prevention domain in Panama, both nationally and locally.

The participants included the Deputy Minister of Public Health, Rogelio Donadío; the Director of the Comprehensive Security Office (OSEGI), Hernán Morales; and representatives of local governments in Panama Province, San Miguelito and Yavitza. All showed interest in the proposal and granted their approval for implementation of the programme.

The coordination proposal was presented by Gian Guido Nobili, an expert from the Efus network and manager of Security Policy Service of the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy.

This model seeks to strengthen coordinated work between national-local levels of government in citizen security and violence prevention themes through cooperation contracts between the local and national level. The aim is to effectively implement a grant fund designated for MINSEG programmes and projects in the area of citizen security.

This proposal enables local governments to serve as a support to the national government in providing efficient management of violence prevention, involving them in the national strategy. In addition, it allows more effective implementation of public resources and strengthening of local governments in citizen security and prevention themes.

The challenge in 2015 is to design a methodological tool that will be able to make the proposal operative and, therefore, more easy to implement in Panamanian territory by taking advantage of the resolve and commitment of the MINSEG.