UNODC and OSCE Counter the Financing of Terrorism

25-27 February, Dushanbe, Tajikistan .- The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) organized a three-day analytical course on Countering the Financing of Terrorism with the support of the Financial Monitoring Department of the National Bank of Tajikistan.

In her opening remarks, Ms. Ashita Mittal, UNODC Regional Representative for Central Asia, recalled that the training programme on Countering the Financing of Terrorism has been in existence for over three years and has already benefited over 30 countries. She emphasized that these courses have helped the counterparts to better understand the threats they face from terrorist financing and to take effective steps to disrupting terrorist groups which threaten them. having participated in the courses, the specialists could find terrorists and stop them from conducting attacks. In particular, topics from this course have helped investigators look again at their cases and identify new leads and priority individuals for further investigation.

"This programme is also about you developing as One Team - each of the agencies here have unique capabilities, but we have seen elsewhere that only together you can work effectively to make the world safer." - concluded her speech Ms. Mittal.

"This capacity-building activity is a synergy between the OSCE and UNODC and is a part of the comprehensive training programme for Central Asian countries with a robust focus on countering terrorism financing issues" - highlighted Mr. Fejzo Numanaj, the Head of the Politico-Military Department of the OSCE Office in Tajikistan. He emphasized that the activity stems directly from the Dushanbe Declaration of the High-Level International Countering Terrorism Conference that urges all UN and OSCE member states to come up with firm measures to suppress the financing of terrorism.

Twenty participants from different agencies to include Ministry of Interior, General Prosecutor's Office, State Committee for National Security and Financial Intelligence Unit of Tajikistan.

The programme seeks to continually improve the training materials which will be used during these courses. The global training team is learning new techniques each day based on cases from Afghanistan, Albania, Somalia, UAE, the USA and West Africa. The findings are shared across the network of trainers so that the participants can have access to the best available learning materials and teaching methods.

The training was implemented within the framework of the UNODC Global Programme against Money Laundering with local support from the Regional Office in Central Asia and respective Country and Programme Offices.

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