The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Regional Programme Office for South East Europe (RPOSEE) carried out the Regional Workshop to Develop Guidelines on International Legal Cooperation Instruments in the Area of Anti-Human Trafficking and Smuggling of Migrants in Belgrade, Serbia from 24 to 26 November 2009.
The workshop was held under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Serbia. Financial support was provided by the Government of Germany within the UNODC project "Enhancing operational capacity to investigate and disrupt human trafficking activities in the Western Balkans".
The event was opened by Mr. Dragan Markovic, State Secretary in the Ministry of Interior of Serbia, Ms. Dragana Lukic, Assistant Minister of Justice of Serbia, Ms. Sybille Pfaff, First Secretary in the Political Section of Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Belgrade and Ms. Carla Ciavarella, UNODC Regional Programme Coordinator.
During the first day of the workshop, UNODC experts presented the draft version of the Guidelines on international legal cooperation instruments in the area of anti-human trafficking and smuggling of migrants. The Guidelines, which development was based on previous UNODC workshop in Budva and a series of bilateral missions to the project beneficiary countries/territories, cover both legal and law enforcement aspects of regional cooperation instruments. Therefore, the workshop entailed the participation of judges, prosecutors, police officers and national anti-human trafficking coordinators from the region. The representatives of relevant international organizations also took part in the discussion.
In order to facilitate the consultative process for the development of the guidelines, two working groups were conducted with the aim of discussing the draft version of the guidelines and sharing ideas and suggestions on how to enhance cooperation in the region.
All of the delegations recognized the important role that international and regional organizations have in facilitating both formal and informal cooperation in combating human trafficking and smuggling of migrants.
In addition, the second day of the workshop was devoted to the discussion on the topic of "Human Trafficking and Corruption"-namely the problem of corruption in the context of human trafficking, the linkages between these two criminal phenomena, and international/regional strategies and responses against them. A UNODC paper " The Role of Corruption in Trafficking in Persons" was also presented on this occasion.
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