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Sri Lanka hosts VBSS training course for SE Asia navies
View(s):A Visit, Board, Search and Seizure (VBSS) course for the boarding teams of Indonesian, Malaysian and Philippine Coast Guard, Police and Customs concluded at the Navy Special Boat Squadron (SBS) Headquarters in Trincomalee last week. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in partnership with the Sri Lanka Navy SBS Training School conducted several training programmes to South Asian and East African states this year.
The Global Maritime Crime Programme (GMCP) of UNODC supports capacity building for maritime law enforcement agencies of member states. A captured drug dhow (a traditional Arabian seagoing vessel) detained by the Sri Lanka Navy serves as a training platform to conduct VBSS training for regional states. The captured vessel provides opportunities to train participants searching for drugs in concealed compartments that are usually found in similar drug trafficking dhows that ply the Indian Ocean. The first VBSS training programme held in partnership with UNODC and the Sri Lanka Navy SBS was conducted in May 2016.
Under that programme participating teams from Madagascar and the Comoros were trained in boarding.
In 2018 the Navy and UNODC conducted two regional VBSS training programmes for vessel boarding teams from the Sri Lankan Coast Guard, Bangladeshi Coast Guard and Maldives Coast Guard. Recently, Mr. Alan Cole, head of GMCP opined that the high seas were the world’s largest crime scene. he stressed that, with around half of the world’s oceans beyond any single nation’s jurisdiction, much more needed to be done to address the law enforcement challenges that occur on the high seas.
The UN expert, addressing the Galle Dialogue 2018 also highlighted unregulated floating armories, trafficking of arms, drug trafficking, illegal fishing and people smuggling as national security risks facing nations in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).
UNODC warned of the emergence of a new “southern route” which is used to traffic narcotics towards the Maldives and Sri Lanka from the Pakistani coast.
Sri Lanka plays a lead role in hosting the South Asia Regional Intelligence Coordination Centre (SARICC) in Colombo, which will support the sharing of criminal intelligence to counter transnational crime in the region.