Assessment mission of BOMCA 9 visits Uzbekistan

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- A new, ninth phase of the EU funded border management programme, BOMCA, was launched in June 2015. It will run for three years and cover all five countries of Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The programme has a total budget of some 5 million euros and is implemented by a consortium of EU member state organisations led by the State Border Guard of Latvia.

It is expected that the overall objective of this phase of the Programme, which is to increase effectiveness of border management in Central Asia, will be reached by introducing advanced elements of the Integrated Border Management (IBM) with the aim to improve cooperation and communication channels among agencies involved, assisting governments in developing and reforming their migration governance, mobility and trade facilitation policies and strengthening capacities of Border and Migration Agencies.

The aim of the assessment mission to Tashkent was to present BOMCA and its components to the main stakeholders, to evaluate the current situation together with beneficiaries of the Republic of Uzbekistan and to define the primary needs and most important areas to be targeted.

A series of meetings were held with representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Border Guards Committee under the National Security Services, the State Customs Committee, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources. Also, meetings were conducted with international organisations such as UNDP, OSCE, Export Control and Border Security Programme of the US Embassy, which are also involved in border management programmes.

The Mission was led by Colonel Zaguzovs, Head of the Administration Department of State Border Guard of Latvia, and comprised representatives of the Latvian State Border Guards, the International Center on Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), Riga Technical University and the Customs Department under the Ministry of Finance of Lithuania.