Mauritania - On 17 March, IOM Mauritania facilitated a Training of Trainers (ToT) on Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling for selected border officials at the Headquarters of the General Directorate for National Security (DGSN) in Nouakchott. 

The activity is part of a 24-month EUR 2.3M project “Strengthening the border management in Mauritania – the involvement of the Gendarmerie” funded by the European Union and was organized as part of a larger collaboration effort with GIZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) that aims at creating a standard training package for border officials in Mauritania. This training will be followed by another session on Migration Management that will take place in April 2015.

While all participants were experienced law enforcement officials, the ToT built their knowledge on the challenge of combating human trafficking and smuggling of migrants while providing them with specific tools to train other border officials. The session addressed relevant key definitions, the understanding of specific vulnerabilities and explained how to identify victims of trafficking.

“Mauritania, with its vast and porous land borders has always been a country of immigration and transit migration; given the migratory pressure from the South and the fact that Mauritania builds the bridge between Sub Saharan and North Africa and onto Europe, the phenomena of trafficking in human beings and smuggling of migrants urgently need to be addressed,” said IOM Project Manager Laura Palatini. 

Moreover, Palatini underscored that, while both fall into the category of organized crime, the two concepts are often confused – while trafficking of persons is a crime against the person who is being exploited, smuggling of migrants is a crime against the state whose borders are crossed irregularly.

Under the training component of this project, IOM also is implementing a survey to assess the perception of the professionalism of border officials among travelers and border communities. The results of this survey will provide precious information to better tailor the training for border officials.

In addition, the project is supporting the Government of Mauritania with several other activities all aiming at consolidating the management of its borders while improving the general security of Mauritania and neighboring countries.

This project reconfirms a multi-year and multi-project engagement of the European Union through IOM on supporting border management initiatives in Mauritania and is part of the support to the implementation of Mauritania’s Border Management Strategy.

For further information, please contact: Laura Palatini, IOM Mauritania; Tel. +222 424 20043, Email:lpalatini@iom.int