OSCE Centre promotes integrated border management in Kazakhstan

TAU. October 11. KAZINFORM A four-day OSCE-organized workshop on integrated border management for 15 Kazakhstani border service officials began on Monday in Aktau, a city on the Caspian Sea.

The OSCE Centre in Astana is organizing the workshop in co-operation with the UN Border Management Programme for Central Asia, the International Organization for Migration, and Kazakhstan's Border Service.

"In the coming four days we will not only cover international professional standards in the area of integrated border management and all related issues, but also stress the most important issues for the region in general, and for Kazakhstan in particular," said Sergey Brestovitskiy, an international border security expert from Russia and one of the trainers, the press service of the OSCE Centre in Astana said.

The border guards, who come from the Aktau region and the cities of Uralsk and Aktobe, will learn about contemporary border management challenges including threats posed by transnational organized crime such as human, narcotics and weapons trafficking, terrorism and illegal migration, and ways of effectively deal with them.

Also included in the agenda are integrated border management principles, border control procedures, risk analysis and assessment, professional ethics and standards, and contingency and emergency planning.

Experts from Russia, Latvia, Poland, and Canada will present current international practices in border security.

This week's seminar is part of the OSCE Centre in Astana's efforts to promote the OSCE border security concept in Kazakhstan. A similar training course was held last year in Merke, Kazakhstan.