OSCE Presence in Albania organizes regional meeting of police canine units, introduces training manual

On 28 and 29 February 2024, the OSCE Presence in Albania organized the second regional expert meeting on advancing the regulatory framework of police canine units. This event, held for the second year in a row in Albania, brought together representatives of police canine units from Tirana, Sarajevo, Podgorica, Belgrade, Skopje, Pristina, and police canine experts from France and Austria. It provided theoretical sessions and practical exercises, discussions and presentations from canine experts.

“Considering the similar challenges our region is actively combatting and treating, these meetings serve as platform through which officials of Western Balkans jurisdictions, international experts and donor community, share knowledge and skills among canine units benefiting from the OSCE assistance projects,” stressed Sasho Trpchevski, Law Enforcement Development Officer in the OSCE Presence in Albania

Saimir Boshnjaku, Director of the Albanian Border and Migration Directorate highlighted the contribution of such meetings to the capacities of the Border and Migration Police, by exchanging the best practices with partners. The praised the co-operation between the State Police and the OSCE Presence on the project of small arms and light weapons.

This year the regional workshop focused on the newly-developed training manual that will serve as a professional growth tool for all dog handlers and instructors. The manual – prepared according to the international standards and tailored to the Albanian State Police needs – will serve as a bases for a training-of-trainers series that will contribute to the enhancement of canine capacities and capabilities to detect illicit firearms, ammunition, and explosives.

The development of the training manual is one of the many activities of the project “Assisting the national authorities of the Republic of Albania to decrease the risk of weapon proliferation and misuse of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW)”, implemented by the Presence with the financial support of the European Union, Germany and France. The regional meeting, also part of the project, was organized with the support of the OSCE Secretariat’s Forum for Security Co-operation Unit and in co-ordination with OSCE SALW projects implemented in the Western Balkans.