UNODC in cooperation with the Ministries of Justice of Burkina Faso and OCRIEST - the French law enforcement body responsible for investigating migrant smuggling - delivered a two-day training course on migrant smuggling for 35 magistrates and law enforcers from Burkina Faso. This was the fifth in a series of trainings for investigators and prosecutors that will be implemented under the Impact Programme both on a national and regional level in North and West Africa over a period of 12 months.
The Impact Programme aims to assist African states in strengthening their criminal justice response to migrant smuggling, and currently consists of three regional projects that cover North and West Africa.* In the framework of the Impact Programme, UNODC in cooperation Europol, INTERPOL and SOCA elaborated a Basic Training Manual on Investigating and Prosecuting Migrant Smuggling. Between December 2008 and June 2009, three working meetings were organized in Senegal, Egypt and Nigeria respectively involving investigators and prosecutors from 30 countries, representing both common and civil law countries from Europe, Africa, North America and the Pacific region.
The Training Manual covers the following thematic areas:
This recent training delivered in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, was made possible through funding received from the European Union and the Government of Spain.
* The IMPACT LEN project aims at improving the capacity building of the law enforcers and magistrates to prevent, to combat and to prosecute smuggling of migrants Within the ECOWAS region and Mauritania, whereas the IMPACT LED provides assistance in Burkina Faso, Cape Verde and Cote d'Ivoire for the domestication of the provisions of the UN protocol on smuggling of migrants.