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Workshop on Border Security and Counter Cross Border Criminal Activity in Mediterranean Region, Avila, Spain

Description

This interactive expert level Workshop on Border Security and Counter Cross Border Criminal Activity in the Mediterranean Region aims to raise awareness and understanding between border security and management and other law enforcement agencies of the OSCE Mediterranean Partners for Co-operation and participating States in the Mediterranean region.

Summary

The Mediterranean region, including OSCE participating States and Partners for Cooperation, is being severely challenged and tested by an ever widening array of serious transnational threats which include the illicit trafficking of drugs, weapons and human beings, among other forms of cross border organized crime.

In the MC.DEC/5/11 on Partners for Co-operation, the OSCE participating States, reaffirmed that the OSCE area is inextricably linked with security in the regions of the Partners for Cooperation, decided to further enhance the OSCE engagement with Partners for Co-operation by broadening dialogue, by strengthening practical co-operation, and further sharing best practices and experience gained in the development of comprehensive, co-operative and indivisible security.

Modalities

The workshop programme is designed in an innovative way, which combines mini-lectures and an interactive table top exercise where the participants are actively engaged with one another as they form teams to confront a complex fictionalised fact pattern that will challenge and stimulate their critical thinking skills, enabling them to find creative ways to confront and overcome the obstacles provided in the evolving scenario.

Each session will start with mini-lectures by international and national experts that have experience in emerging transnational challenges. Mini-lectures will be followed by interlinked Acts of the interactive scenario. The participants will be divided into three working groups (WG) and asked to discuss, analyse and formulate appropriate responses to the evolving fictionalized fact pattern. In this way, the participants will work with and support one another as they strive to develop new and innovative solutions to issues that they are confronted with in the interactive scenario. This interactive forum will also allow the participants to apply their own experiences, know-how and intellects to examine these alarming trends and interlinked issues as they are occurring in the scenario and to find new pathways and innovative solutions.

Format

This workshop is organized by the Transnational Threats Department Border Security and Management Unit in close co-operation with the Government of Spain, and will include approximately 45 participants. The expert level participants from the OSCE Partners for Cooperation from the Mediterranean region and OSCE participating States in the Mediterranean Region will be invited through their respective Permanent Delegations to the OSCE in Vienna.

The workshop is open to national experts representing relevant agencies involved (directly or indirectly) in border security and management issues in their respective countries, and also for representatives from international and regional organizations such as INTERPOL, EUROPOL, UNODC, FRONTEX, and EGMONT that are willing to contribute to the workshop. The OSCE encourages the participation of female experts at the event.