22/06/2018
The European project to support the fight against drug trafficking organised a regional workshop leading to improved international police cooperation
Closing ceremony of the workshop
Bolivia is a country with 7252 kilometres of borders on both land and rivers with 5 countries in the region: Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. This is one reason, among others, apart from its being a country in the centre of Latin America, why many of the illegal activities of the region pass through Bolivia. In spite of this, until June 2017, when the National Directorate of Borders (DINAFRON) was created, there was no real unit in the Bolivian police force with the essential mission of controlling the country’s borders.
However, DINAFRON still lacks human, technical and technological resources, preventing it from being able to cover such a diverse border. For this reason, the project European support for special forces to combat drugs in application of the law, managed by FIIAPP in conjunction with CONALTID and financed by the EU, organized a regional workshop in which DINAFRON tried to achieve greater efficiency and coordination with its counterparts in Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina.
The aim of the workshop was to provide a logical vision of what the management, organisation, structures and functions must look like of the coordination and cooperation that must exist between police officers assigned to the control and safety of land borders. In addition, it also served as a point of contact so that, in the future, there can be more precise coordination with other projects already working on this theme, such as EL PAcCTO, and others which are about to start, such as AMERIFRON.
The workshop was also an attempt to develop a system of regional operational cooperation on land borders in the area, to improve the exchange of cross-border information.
Taking part in the activity were top police officers from Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. Its closing ceremony was attended by leading representatives of all the participating countries, including the Bolivian Minister of Government, the ambassadors of Paraguay and Chile, the consuls of Brazil, Argentina and Peru and the head of the project team, representing the European Union Delegation.
