The fourteen English-speaking Fellows, currently participating in the 91st edition of the Fellowship Programme of the World Customs Organization (WCO), have now completed the second component of the Programme taking place at the WCO Headquarters.
The Fellowship Programme, which this year marks its 40th anniversary, aims at enabling Customs officers from developing countries to acquire sound knowledge of internationally recognized Customs standards, techniques and practices, and to bolster their supervisory and management capacities so as to help them carry out reform and modernization processes within their respective administrations.
The Programme keeps a standard structure and is organized in three components over a period of seven weeks. The first component mainly consists of online meetings, self-learning on CLiKC! and remote tutorship sessions.
A round table session with the WCO Secretary General Ian Saunders marked the start of the second component and their stay in Brussels. On this occasion, the Secretary General exchanged views with the Fellows, responding to their questions, sharing his vision and priorities, and encouraging them to take the lessons of the Programme with them in their careers going forward.
While at the WCO Secretariat, the Fellows were also given the opportunity to take part in a Leadership and Management Development Workshop in view of enhancing their skills and knowledge so as to contribute more effectively to the development and modernization processes of their respective administrations. They also worked on developing a modernization project under the guidance of a WCO tutor.
A study trip to observe operational practices in a partner Customs administration constitutes the third and last component of the Fellowship Programme, and is currently taking place within one of the following partner administrations: China, Japan, or South Korea.
Thanks to the financial support of and partnerships with the Customs Administrations of China and Japan, as well as the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Korea, the 91st Fellowship Programme has brought together participants from the Administrations of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Belize, Bhutan, Cameroon, Eswatini, Guyana, Maldives, Nepal, Peru, Sri Lanka, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
For more information, please contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org