Strengthening law enforcement capacities for fighting human trafficking in South-Eastern Europe

Background

The project was in response to the request by SEE participating countries for support in the development and implementation of comprehensive national training plans, on the basis of the agreed regional training standards and with a view to enhance the implementation of their national anti-trafficking strategies.

Designed strategies of training of law enforcement personnel – particularly at specialist investigator level – aimed at increasing operational effectiveness and capacity for international cooperation and, more importantly, operational interaction at the regional level.

The project therefore contributed to fostering such regional operational interaction.

Objectives

The overall goal of the project was to enhance the capacity of SEE participating countries (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR of Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and the UN-administered territory of Kosovo) to coherently implement a comprehensive national Anti-Trafficking Training Strategy for law enforcement.

The training strategy is based on the Law Enforcement Best Practice Manual for Anti-Trafficking in Human Beings produced by UNDP Romania and the “Regional Standard for Anti-Trafficking Police Training in SEE” produced by ICMPD.

By combining and amending these programmes the project used their synergies in order to create a new, comprehensive training scheme with specific modules for different target groups.

(Achievements &) Expected Results

• Ensuring the large-scale implementation of the Comprehensive Anti-Trafficking Training Strategy for Law Enforcement in SEE, i.e. training of law enforcement officials at the generalist and the specialist level, in a professional manner according to up-to-date interactive teaching methods
• Involving participants in national implementation, regional exchange of experiences and update of the regional training module.
• Supporting the development of sustainable national counter-trafficking training strategies and national level implementation as needed
• Strengthening interactive training skills of project beneficiaries.
• General monitoring and technical backstopping on capacity building and training in participating countries/territories and official-level consultations/advocacy, thus ensuring the political support for the implementation of the trainings by the trainer teams.
• Offering a platform for the exchange of experiences, materials and information, as well as contact rosters via anti-trafficking dedicated web means.