Due to the support of Japanese Customs Cooperation Fund (CCF) a regional Security Workshop for law enforcement officers of the MENA region was conducted by WCO experts from April 1-4 2019.

The workshop was conducted by the WCO between 1 and 4 April, and was attended by more than 35 representatives from 14 MENA countries.  Experts from the RILO Middle East, INTERPOL Firearms Programme, the Small Arms Survey, UK Border Force Project Hunter, and Niger Customs also provided additional support in terms of analysis and topic expertise.

Besides national presentations and discussions on the region security threats and exploration of customs responses, the WCO experts provided a detailed insight of the WCO Security Programme, their analytical capacity as well as their tools and services provided to all member states.

The workshop was successful and rich in its content from theory to practice and concluded with the participants drawing up an assistance roadmap detailing the future security related training required by the MENA region. In the roadmap document the participating countries agreed upon to further enhance customs capacity in countering security threats and how the WCO will further assist.

This event follows a recent regional Programme Global Shield training workshop in Qatar and a national Strategic Trade Control Enforcement (STCE) training workshop in Morocco in March. Later this month the WCO will deliver another STCE workshop in Tunisia, whilst the WCO’s Small Arms and Light Weapons Project will be delivery a series of training workshops across the region in the next two years in conjunction with INTERPOL and the Small Arms Survey.