Day Two

WE LOOK FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU – 25th-27th APRIL 2023

Wednesday 26th APRIL 2023

9.00am-10.30am
Plenary Session – Securing maritime borders and combatting maritime crime
Maritime borders are and will remain the most challenging border environment to secure, and not just because the actual border is out at sea or in the ‘Blue Borders’. Once the border is crossed you have the sheer length of the coastlines that have to be secured, much of it rugged and inaccessible. But also because of the multi-dimensional nature of a maritime and ‘Blue’ border. Maritime borders are surface and sub-surface, land, and air, and where each of those environments meet you have a unique set of technical and mitigation problems that need to be solved. This session looks at the issues and some of the solutions.

– Ashraful Hoq Chowdhury, Director General, Bangladesh Coast Guard

– Rear Admiral UH Ahmet Kendir, Commander, Turkish Coast Guard*

– Senior Representative, US Coast Guard*

– Ramon Ribas De Reyna, Head of Maritime and Coast Guard Unit, EUCAP Somalia

– Securing ports along the maritime Balkan routes – Ruggero Scaturro, Analyst, Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC)

– Rear Admiral (UH) Stefano Turchetto, Operation Commander, EURONAVFORMED/Operation Irini*

10:30am-11:15am – Networking Coffee Break

11.15am-12.30pm
Breakout Session – Trafficking in human beings & migration-related crime (the migration crisis in the digital age)
Human traffickers are rapacious, ruthless, callous, and unscrupulous, but they are also intelligent, cunning, ingenious and adaptable. This means that wherever a gap or weakness in our borders is closed, they will immediately look to find a new gap to exploit. We have seen this repeatedly but most recently in the Channel where traffickers have switched emphasis from smuggling people through the Port of Dover and Shuttle (of course this is still going on daily) to providing unseaworthy small craft for the perilous journey across the channel. Targeting the traffickers is clearly the best way of tackling the issue, but what can border agencies do to affect this?

– Approach to safeguarding and MSHT at the the UK Border – Amanda Read, Border Force National Operational Vulnerability/ MSHT lead, Border Force

– International cooperation of national coordination centers for border management as a basis for fighting against organized crime at border crossings – Vladimir Pivovarov, National Coordinator for Integrated Border Management, National Coordinative Center for Intergrated Border Management, North Macedonia

– Conduits of Cross Border Insecurity: Border Residents, Migrant Smugglers and Human Trafficking – Abdul-Razak Tahiru, Head/Transnational Investigations and Henry Kumah, Assistant Inspector, Ghana Immigration Service

– Importance of Border Security-Albania Case – Dr Lorenca Bejko, Diplomat/First Secretary, Albanian Embassy in Netherlands

12:30pm-2:00pm – Networking Delegate Lunch

2:00pm – 3:30pm
Plenary Session – Countering terrorism and cross border organised crime
The links between terrorism and organised cross border crime is long established. How much and how often terrorist organisations and organised crime work together is more difficult to ascertain. We often see news reports about returning terrorist fighters using human trafficking routes to cross borders, but whether this is terrorists masquerading as irregular migrants or direct collusion between organised crime groups and terrorists is difficult to know. This session will look at what we do know about collusion and what we can do to counter it through the use of, for example, Watchlists and biometrics.

– Terrorism as a phenomenon, the return of foreign fighters and their infiltration in the direction of preparing and executing terrorist acts in the Republic of North Macedonia, with a special ascent of the role of the Ministry of Interior in detecting and suppressing terrorist threats – Tony Mihajlovski, Chief inspector, Section for terrorism investigations, Bureau for public security / Ministry of Interior, North Macedonia

– Behaviour detection approaches for border security – Marina Tzvetkova, Project Officer, & Guido Ferraro, Project Manager, EC Joint Research Centre

– UNOCT/UNCCT BSM Programme – Gorancho Stojkovski, Programme Management Officer, UNOCT | UNCCT | Border Security and Management

– Demarkation and Good Borders – Good Neighbors – Mile Milenkoski, Border Security Expert, North Macedonia

– Counterterrorism and Border Security Systems in Republic of Korea – Bora Park, Research Fellow, Institute for National Security Strategy, Korea

– Human rights-compliant counter-terrorism approaches – Senior Representative, ODIHR