Border Police in Costa Rica trained to fight Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling

 
Costa Rica
9 October, 2018

San José, Costa Rica — The Mesoamerica Program of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), in conjunction with the Office against Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling of the General Directorate of Migration, held a training program for 15 officers of the Border Police of Costa Rica on detecting the crimes of human trafficking and migrant smuggling and identifying the profiles of vulnerable migrants.

The workshop aimed to improve the ability of the Border Police staff to detect trafficking cases at the country's strategic border posts, using a methodology of instructing instructors, in which the staff who attend the workshop are then able to replicate the training with their colleagues on the border. The training was conducted in person and lasted three days.

It was based on the Guidelines for Interinstitutional Coordination on the Crimes of Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling of Costa Rica, which the DGME published this year in conjuction with IOM, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the Border Police.

Additionally, the workshop provided interview techniques for detecting these crimes and identifying the profiles of vulnerable persons, with the goal of ensuring that criminals are identified quickly and that assistance for migrants maintains a human rights-based approach.

This workshop enabled feedback on techniques and methods for identifying crimes often linked to migration, which is necessary because migrant smuggling and human trafficking networks are constantly finding new methods of violating migration controls for various criminal purposes.