Recommendations on Policing in Multi-Ethnic Societies valuable advice and information on minority and ethnic issues. Police can also establish more formal partnerships with such bodies to undertake initiatives such as identifying and supporting potential recruits from national minorities, providing advice and inputs into police training, and assessing options for responding to ethnic tensions and conflict. A partnership of this kind should involve a formal agreement between two or more separate organizations to work together on an equal and continuing basis to achieve a common purpose. Building effective co-operation with community groups and NGOs may take time, and requires the development of trust and mutual understanding. Both sides may initially be cautious: the minorities may suspect that the police have 'hidden agendas' such as to extract intelligence about criminal activities among national minorities; while the police may have little experience of working with civil society groups and may suspect these groups' motives, especially if they have been publicly critical of police in the past. What is important is to find common purposes such as to improve policeminority relations and to increase access to justice for minorities, and on this foundation to identify ways in which each can help the other while respecting their different roles and styles of working (including the continued right of NGOs to criticise the police on behalf of their communities when things are done wrong). Experience shows, however, that the benefits to be gained from such partnerships by both sides are substantial, and tend to increase with time. They also provide a framework within which any subsequent problems in police-minority relationships can be addressed and resolved through dialogue and mediation. 9 Minorities can themselves contribute to community safety and access to justice by promoting awareness of rights and responsibilities of their members under the law, by providing advice and support for persons who are victims of crime, by encouraging civic participation in activities relating to community safety and policing, and by working to promote the interests of and fair treatment for members of their communities in matters relating to policing and justice. The resolution of many wrongs or disputes between persons within minority communities may also be able to be resolved through mediation or other traditional means within such communities, without recourse to the police or other national justice agencies. However, it is also essential that minorities, or particular groups within them, do not take justice into their own hands (e.g. by undertaking 'vigilante' activities), and that all members of 9 Further guidance on building co-operation between police and NGOs is included in the booklet published by the European Policing and Human Rights Platform: Police and NG0s: Why and How Human Rights NG0s and Police Services Can and Should Work Together, available at http://www.epphr.dk/downloads.htm. 29