Workshop facilitated by NATO COE-DAT
For Border agencies and agencies at the border only
Friday 26th April – 9.00am-10.30am
Moderators of NATO COE-DAT:
– Marouan Hitti, Lebanese Armed Forces (Rtd)
– Ugur Gungor, Faculty Member, Baskent University
– Richard Warnes, Vedette Consulting
A Centre of Excellence (COE) is an entity offering specialised expertise and experience to the benefit of the NATO Alliance, especially in support of Transformation. The Centre of Excellence Defence Against Terrorism (COE-DAT) is a NATO accredited, multi-national sponsored entity located in Ankara, Türkiye. COE-DAT was inaugurated in 2005 as the second among the 30 NATO Centres of Excellence that exist today. The Centre is composed of personnel from eight NATO nations and is focused on providing key decision-makers with realistic solutions to terrorism and counter-terrorism (CT) challenges. COE-DAT is designed to complement NATO’s current resources while also serving three different functions: NATO’s Department Head in Education and Training for CT; Education and Training Facility offering courses and other training and education opportunities; and, a strategic-level think tank.
Border Security is one of the topics that COE-DAT invests in, as it is deemed relevant to CT efforts. Border Security, Refugees and Counter-Terrorism is one of the 12 NATO-approved courses that are taught at COE-DAT.
During the COE-DAT workshop at the World Border Security Congress, COE-DAT will provide an academic insight into border security in the context of CT, and use case study examples from Türkiye and Lebanon in order to highlight how theoretical understanding can be applied in practice to better equip policy-level decision makers to defend their borders against terrorist activity.
The aim of the workshop is to allow participants to engage with subject matter experts and discuss a series of factors that contribute to border security, highlighting how technological advances need to be matched by human understanding and conventional methods in order to provide comprehensive defence against terrorism.
The workshop aims to provide insight at the strategic level with regards to managing the range of tools available to develop border security, though this will include understanding the requirement to ensure strategy can be implemented at the tactical level. The outcome is to view border security and CT as a holistic process, underpinned by both academic research and practical experience.”
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