9-10 July 2019, Bangkok, Thailand

The 2nd Regional Workshop on Developing ASEAN Guidelines for Detecting and Preventing Wildlife Trafficking was hosted by the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation (DNP) of Thailand and jointly organized by the ASEAN Secretariat with USAID and US-ASEAN on 9-10 July 2019, Bangkok, Thailand, with the financial support of USAID. Around 40 representatives from the ASEAN countries, ASEAN Secretariat, WCO ROCB A/P and UNODC regional office participated in this workshop. At the invitation of the ASEAN Secretariat, Dr. Tong Hua, program manager of the ROCB A/P, as one of the resource speakers attended the workshop.

The ASEAN Guidelines for Detecting and Preventing Wildlife Trafficking aim to develop effective regional mechanism and to improve collaboration among relevant law enforcement agencies and other wildlife enforcement issues. In the course of the workshop, Dr. Tong Hua underlined several suggestions on information and data exchange mechanism by using the WCO CENcomm Customs communication platform and shared a good practice taken by the WCO to establish the Operational Coordination Unit (OCU) for better team management to combate cross border illegal wildlife trade. He also touched upon the framework of the WCO Illicit Trade Report as well as the key elements of the WCO Joint Operation Report which provided food for thought among participants. The workshop reviewed and validated each chapter of the current draft version of Guidelines. The Guidelines will be endorsed by the 22nd ASEAN Senior Officials on Forestry (ASOF) at its Meeting on 18-19 July 2019 in Philippines.

For more information, please write to us at rocb@rocbap.org.