Guinea: West African Police Chiefs Meet in Conakry

By staff writer

CONAKRY —In pursuit to beef up security in the West African space by the ECOWAS Commission and partners, the Technical Sub-Committee of the West African Police Chiefs Committee (WAPCCO) 2 days meeting opened in Conakry, the Guinean capital Thursday to discuss ways and means of combating national and trans-border criminality.

Delegations of member states from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone are in attendance. The meeting will consider appropriate strategies against transnational crime through joint and/or simultaneous police operations, targeting theft of vehicles, child trafficking as well as trafficking in small arms and light weapons and counterfeited drugs, among others.

Participants will examine presentations, including those on different police operations envisaged to be adopted by Member States, and also discuss the legal framework of police operations in the region.

 The meeting will also review the status of implementation of recommendations from previous meetings, including the harmonization of national legislation on the most prevalent trans-national crimes in the region and increased collaboration between Member States and the Regional Bureau of INTERPOL based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.

 Previous meetings had also recommended that the ECOWAS Commission and INTERPOL should assist Member States with equipment and kits for the detection and analysis of narcotics and counterfeit drugs.

In addition, Member States were encouraged to organize sensitization seminars on international police co-operation, in consultation with the General Secretariat of INTERPOL. They were also urged to ratify the Protocol relating to the Criminal Intelligence and Investigations Bureau (CIIB) which was adopted by the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government in October 2005.