Equipped and trained police officers, synchronized procedures and coordination among police agencies and prosecutors’ offices are essential to improve the safety of BiH citizens and to suppress illegal arms’ trade – this was the main conclusion of the workshop which was attended by more than 40 representatives from SIPA, BiH Border Police, BiH State Prosecutor and all ministries of internal affairs, i.e. police agencies at entity and cantonal levels.

Countering Illicit Arms Trafficking (CIAT) Project financed by the governments of Germany and France and implemented by UNDP, already enabled a number of successful actions leading to seizures of illegal arms and drugs. During the first phase of CIAT, BIH Border Police was provided with the detection equipment worth EUR 350,000 and almost 1,500 police officers were trained.

Hannah Doenges from German Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized strong commitment of her government to continue supporting BIH institutions to counter illicit arms’ trafficking in Bosnia and Herzegovina through CIAT project.

“Strengthening coordination and procedures to supress illicit arms trafficking improve the safety of all BIH citizens. It is a pleasure to see that all police agencies at all levels recognized the potential of cooperation through CIAT project which the UNDP is implementing with the support from German and French governments”, said Slobodan Tadic, Justice and Security Sector Leader, UNDP Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Previous experience, including the use of the most sophisticated equipment provided, will be incorporated into new standard operating procedures which will be developed for the police agencies in the coming period. In addition, the security experts will conduct a number of trainings for over 2,000 police staff from all police agencies in the following topics: risk analysis, tracing of weapons, data collection, running an investigation and reacting in emergency situations.

Through inclusion of arms’ and explosives’ identification platform, all police agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina will have a synchronized approach to processing of crime acts pertaining to arms’ smuggling. This will lead to the fulfilment to one of the key EU requirements concerning illicit arms’ trafficking.

The workshop focused on supressing illegal arms trafficking was held in Doboj between 20 and 22 March, 2019.