7 December, Mavrovo, North Macedonia: The UNODC Global Firearms Programme (GFP) hosted a workshop to foster an inter-institutional exchange of information in firearms-related cases. The event gathered 26 participants from three different institutions competent for processing firearms-related cases, the Prosecution, the Ministry of Interior including border police, and the Customs Administration. This is the third event of this series that covered the geographical north-west of the country, including the border crossings with Serbia and Kosovo.
The primary goal of the event was to offer the practitioners a platform for the exchange of experiences and an opportunity to overview the implementation of the Criminal Procedure Code. Each of the institutions' representatives made a presentation of firearms-related cases showcasing their perspective and the challenges they face. The discussion that followed focused on different issues detected by practitioners during implementing their daily obligations. One point was raised over the vulnerability of the customs officials who as first responders are doing the physical inspections but are not armed and depend on the police for additional security and armed support. There was a dilemma whether to arm all customs officials or simply increase the cooperation with the police officers presented physically on the border crossings.
The participants recommended further developing the exchange of information during pre-investigation, investigation, and indicting stages of firearms-related cases, as well as support for the development of some type of Operational Guidelines that will set the standard for information exchange between national institutions involved in firearms cases. Also, the issues that appear during the night shifts were discussed, especially the role of the Prosecutors that are on duty during the night, which don't produce any written materials that can be transferred to the prosecutor that comes to regular duty in the morning. For this reason, the prosecutor in the morning is starting the process again and the work done during the night seems to serve nobody. All these issues might be solved by the adoption of Standard Operating Procedures that will prescribe the actions that must be undertaken by each of the actors in the criminal process, and UNODC was called upon by the participants to support the establishment of the WG that will draft such SOPs.
This activity is implemented with the financial support provided by Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, and Norway through the Western Balkans SALW Control Roadmap Trust Fund and supported by the European Union.