From November 29 till December 2, 2022, the Border Management Programme in Central Asia (BOMCA 10) in partnership with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) held a national training of trainers (ToT, basic level) on document security in Termez. The training session aimed at enhancing the capacity of trainers and instructors with the expertise in document authenticity verification and advancing their skills in detection of forged documents.

The training session has been completed by the instructors of the institutes and training centres responsible for training professionals in the area of documents checks of persons crossing the border, as well as border control and customs officers with respective experience.

The expertise during the workshop was delivered by the Chief of the Examination Service of the State Border Guard of Latvia.

In the framework of ToT, experts provided basic and advanced training curricula developed on the basis of the European Union’s best practices and a set of materials for further training of staff in the field. At the end of a four-day workshop, a regional expert network was established to facilitate information exchange in the area of document security. In the future, participants of the advanced ToT course will be trained to prepare Fraudulent Travel Document Warnings (alerts) to be disseminated through the national points of contact.

This ToT is implemented under the framework of the Component 1 “Institutional Development of Border Control Agencies”, under which similar ToTs have been completed earlier for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

BOMCA also further enhances the technical capacities of the Training Centre of the Border Guard Forces of the State Security Services of the Republic of Uzbekistan.  As a part of addressing short-term needs the Centre was equipped with items to support training activities on document security in the amount of EUR 9,993. In the framework of the activity, "Introduction of distance learning between educational institutions of the border agencies of Uzbekistan, Central Asia and the member states of the European Union", distance learning equipment was provided in the amount of EUR 10,019.

This type of technical support is directly related to the implementation of individual activities under the thematic Component 1 of the BOMCA programme, and is aimed at improving the capacities of the national counterparts to effectively utilise distance learning in their training programmes.