Further institutional coordination to combat human trafficking in Bolivia

The Bolivian Police and Public Prosecutor’s Office have signed an inter-institutional cooperation agreement to create a multidimensional Specialist Multidisciplinary Team (SMT) to combat human trafficking in Bolivia. The agreement has been signed, after more than two years of previous work in association with the EL PAcCTO cooperation programme. 

The SMTs are organised operational groups that provide specific and practical response to complex investigations. To achieve this, its members receive training to achieve a high degree of specialisation. The SMTs facilitate the coordination and exchange of information between the different players in the criminal chain such as investigators, prosecutors and other specialist officials, enabling teamwork between those involved. 

During this first stage, the new SMTs will be based in La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz and will be introduced later into other Bolivian departments. For this system to function effectively the institutions signing the agreement have undertaken to designate liaisons at a national and departmental level for each institution, jointly developing operational plans and creating a monitoring and evaluation committee to review compliance with targets, among other areas. 

El PAcCTO is a European Union-funded cooperation programme that is managed by FIIAPP and Expertise France in collaboration with the Italo-Latin American Institute and the Camões Institute from Portugal that works to strengthen the fight against organised crime in Latin America. The SMTs are part of EL PAcCTO’s strategy to support the formation of new models of inter-institutional coordination and achieve greater efficiency in the fight against organised crime.