On May 02-05, 2018 a yearly Regional Workshop for consortia of border guarding and customs training institutions of Central Asian countries was held in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The representatives of the training institutions from all five Central Asian countries gathered to share their experience and ideas on the capacity building activities in the educational processes.
Migration processes continue to grow in the Kyrgyz Republic. Currently, migration directly affects over 3 million people (approx. 50% of the total population), and it will remain an important economic and social factor in the foreseeable future, and a constituent part of foreign policy. Therefore, harmonisation of conflict-ascertainment and migration-related legal actions is a primary objective for government policy development and implementation in the long-term.
On November 25th, 2015, the European Commission adopted a proposal to grant inclusion in the extended Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP+) to Kyrgyzstan. After consideration by the Council and the European Parliament, the granting EU regulation was published in the Official Journal of the EU on January 26th, 2016, and came into effect the following day. The decision of the European Union to grant GSP+ status to the Kyrgyz Republic opened up a new potential in economic relations, and offered opportunities for Kyrgyzstan to increase and diversify its exports and strengthen its economy. The GSP+ means the full removal of tariffs on more than 6000 product categories, and Kyrgyz exporters are now able, at a zero tariff rate, to supply agricultural products such as fruits, processed fruits (canned fruits, juice), dried fruits (walnuts, almonds, pistachios), food products, tobacco, textiles, felt products, clothing (including leather), and carpets to the European Union.
On April 10th-12th, Bishkek hosted an EU expert team, who aimed to assess the strategic development of Integrated Border Management (IBM) in the Kyrgyz Republic. N. Garbars, Chief of Latvian State Border Guard and Coordinator of BOMCA 9, together with Ingrida Gulbe Otanke, Chief of Latvian Customs Service, discussed border management strategies and the development thereof in Kyrgyzstan.
On March 28th-30th in Bishkek and April 2nd-4th in Astana, experts met with main border management actors and facilitated the development of a country risk analysis report, where the main risks for border security are stated and measures for their prevention and elimination are listed. This activity built upon the guidelines on interagency cooperation, which were developed in both countries previously.
On February 28-30 in Dushanbe, March 03-05 in Tashkent and March 28-30 in Ashgabat workshops on contingency planning were held, gathering representatives of state agencies involved in border control.
On March 13 -15 March, 2018 Bishkek hosted multilateral workshop for dog handling specialists. Managers of K-9 departments of respective border, customs and counter-narcotics agencies from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan gathered together in order to exchange experience and discuss perspectives of development and modernization of K-9 functioning in their countries.
On February 27- March 01 a Regional Training of Trainers on profiling at border checkpoints was held in Almaty in cooperation with the OSCE Programme Office and the INL Bureau (US Embassy). The event gathered lecturers of training institutions from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
