Capacity Building for Criminal Justice Practitioners Combating Cybercrime and Cyber-enabled Crime in South-Eastern Europe

Summary

The objective of the project is to build up and enhance capacities of criminal justice institutions (e.g., police officers, criminal investigators, prosecutors, judges and defense lawyers) in investigating cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime, thereby enabling practitioners to detect, identify and gather intelligence and digital evidence necessary to prosecute all types of criminal activities.

The project consists of 3 stages of implementation:

  1.  All training activities will be carried out with the expectation of subsequent local implementation of the Training-of-Trainers (TOT) courses in the following academic year.
  2. Regional review workshops on the topics of Digital Evidence, Darknet and Cryptocurrencies Investigations, Cybercrime/Digital Forensics Training, Open Source Intelligence Investigations will be organised, with a view of exchanging experiences and identifying challenges and modifying the training courses accordingly
  3. A regional conference will be organized, to take stock, assess the achieved results and identify the areas that require additional attention.

This capacity building project aims to develop and enhance the responsiveness, professional knowledge and skills of the selected groups of specialized law enforcement officers in South-Eastern Europe to address common and new challenges in fighting cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime. Furthermore, the project aims to build training capacities of respective beneficiaries to ensure sustainability and continuity of the achieved results and established processes by employing a ToT component as its core element.

Background

Cybercrime is steadily increasing in scope, sophistication, number and types of cyber attacks, leading to increased numbers of victims and economic damage, due to the unique combination of high profits and asymmetric risks for criminals. This trend poses a significant challenge for criminal justice institutions, since responding to these new forms of traditional crimes requires specific qualifications and skills.

In the OSCE Strategic Framework for Police-Related Activities (PC.DEC/1049), participating States (pS) tasked the OSCE to deliver or facilitate "specialized training in criminal investigation for law enforcement agencies and other elements of the criminal justice system, particularly to enhance capacities in techniques which have proven effective in organized crime cases" in support of the implementation of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC). 

In implementing the project's activities, TNTD/SPMU will co-ordinate and co-operate with and complement already existing activities of other lOs', such as the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL), Europol, ECTEG, Council of Europe (CoE), INTERPOL and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), who are also key actors in fighting cybercrime at the international and regional level in SEE.

For more information, please contact: Mr. Joachim Wenz at Joachim.Wenz@osce.org and SPMU@osce.org.