28 August 2008
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9th EAPCCO Annual General Meeting Bujumbura, Burundi – 28-30 August 2007 Keynote speech by INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble  Printable version
M. le Ministre de l’Intérieure et de la Sécurité Publique du Burundi
It is a real pleasure to be here with you today and see you all once again. As you know for personal family reasons, I could not attend this year’s African Regional Conference – the first and only one that I have missed since being elected your Secretary General almost 7 years ago. During these 7 years and INTERPOL have grown stronger together. We have achieved goals together that would have seemed unthinkable back in 2000. Let’s not forget that it was only in 2000 that the EAPCCO Constitution was signed and named the INTERPOL Sub-Regional Bureau in Nairobi, Kenya as its Secretariat. Since this agreement did not go into force until 2002; this is our 5-year anniversary as your Secretariat. We have accomplished much together; we have much to celebrate, but this meeting provides a platform on which we can do even more together. In fact, the EAPCCO Annual General Meeting is an important event for INTERPOL. Since it is you our Chiefs of Police who must guide Interpol’s policies and activities both on a regional and global level, these meetings give you an opportunity to share with us your needs, your challenges and your goals. So, I genuinely welcome this opportunity to be with you, and I thank both the Minister of Interior and Public Security and the Chief of Police of Burundi for organizing this – the 9th EAPPCO Annual General Meeting. Our colleagues from your police service and from Interpol’s General Secretariat in Lyon and in our Sub-Regional Bureau in Nairobi have done a superb job in preparing an exciting agenda for us. But, let me now return to the theme of 5-year anniversary celebrations. At anniversary celebrations, it is important to take stock of what has been achieved; so let me highlight an historic achievement that occurred just last month here in the EAPCCO region. But, it was so significant an achievement that its effect has been felt around the world.
As police chiefs, you know better than most that if you cannot communicate, then cannot cooperate internationally. You may remember in 2002, I committed myself as your Secretary General to make sure that all INTERPOL member countries would be connected to a state of the art and secure global police communications system. I did not promise that all wealthy countries; or all powerful countries would be connected worldwide. I promised that all INTERPOL member countries would be connected worldwide. At the time, not even all of EAPCCO countries had been connected to the old system – even though it had been around for over 15 years. Even those African countries that were connected had difficulty using that old system for their every day needs because one could not send photographs or fingerprints via that system. For our new system that we would call I-24/7, we wanted all of Africa to have access to it, and we wanted Africa to have the same state of the art system as the other INTERPOL regions of the world. A number of people said that our goal was too ambitious to be a goal; they said we should think of it as a dream to wish for, but not to expect to achieve. Well whether you called it a goal or a dream for the organization, last month the final element of that goal or dream was achieved right here in Eastern Africa, by Somalia an EAPCCO member. On July 11, 2007, Somalia became our 186th and final INTERPOL member country to be connected to I-24/7. For the first time in history each and every INTERPOL member country’s police services is now able to send and receive valuable police related information such as fingerprints, photographs, DNA profiles, MO, names, etc. within seconds worldwide. This could not have happened without the deep and personal commitment of each and every one of you – EAPCCO Chiefs of Police. We have reached this goal and fulfilled a dream of sorts despite the different challenges and obstacles we faced. But, now that we have connected all member countries’ INTERPOL National Central Bureaus to I-24/7, we cannot stop there!
Our next important challenge is to bring the different INTERPOL tools and services into the frontline: i.e. through the expansion of the I-24/7 system beyond the NCBs. Significant progress in this area, through the INTERPOL MIND/FIND System, has already been made, allowing field officers to access INTERPOL databases both for border control and international investigation. This is an extremely important tool and advantage to the law enforcement community to protect borders from dangerous criminals and terrorists and to identify otherwise unknown criminals. I strongly believe that it is one of our most important challenges — if not our most important — to ensure that police officers in the field have access to the right information at the right time. The MIND/FIND System is one of our many efforts to meet that challenge. MIND/FIND is for ALL INTERPOL MEMBER COUNTRIES: Some people believed that MIND/FIND could only be implemented by our wealthy or powerful countries, but we proved to the world the power of cooperating through INTERPOL when we connected all of the Caribbean Cricket World Cup host countries to MIND/FIND. We did this in 6 months because we had the support of the Chiefs of Police; the relevant ministers; and the Heads of Government of that region. Last night, in speaking with my brother Major General Kale KAYIHURA, the Head of Police for Uganda, we agreed that Uganda would put in place the MIND/FIND border control system in advance of its hosting of the meeting of Commonwealth countries during the month of November. This will take great effort of both of our organizations’ parts, but we believe that it can be done. In addition, I spoke with our President, South Africa’s Police Commissioner, Jackie Selebi, who committed even more assistance from South Africa’s Police Service than is already being given. Beginning next month, we will rotate staff from our Sub-Regional Bureau and from IPSG through Uganda to ensure that you have the support you need. I will personally travel there personally in the next several weeks to learn firsthand how Interpol can help provide Uganda with the support it needs to help it host a safe Commonwealth meeting. My point to our police brothers and sisters in Uganda is that you are not alone; Interpol member countries in Africa and around the world stand ready to help you, and we in the INTERPOL General Secretariat worldwide will also help you.
Our collective efforts in the region have not been limited to the roll-out of I-24/7 system or to helping Uganda to prepare for hosting the Commonwealth meeting. Indeed, it was clear to all of us that we could effectively and successfully address serious crimes in this region if we worked together. This led us to develop joint operations against the trafficking of human beings, cattle rustling (Project MIFUPO), stolen motor vehicles (Project UMOJA) and the illicit trafficking of small arms and light weapons in the Great Lakes region, the Horn of Africa and the surrounding countries (Project SILAHA). Furthermore, we focused on enhancing operational capacity and inter-operability of our police units through the conduct of specialized training. Such training led to the successful conduct of cross-border police operations against stolen motor vehicles, small arms trafficking, illicit drug trafficking, terrorism and trafficking in human beings, to name a few. The efficient and effective execution of joint police operations like Operation UMOJA, conducted last year against stolen motor vehicles here in East Africa, was a direct result of the vehicle crime training provided to specialized crime investigators in the region. Providing training to police officers, not only here in East Africa but also in other parts of the world, shows that INTERPOL tools and services are useful, effective and have proven crucial against crime, but only as long as police officers use and know how to use them well. I believe that there is an urgent need to effectively “link” INTERPOL tools and services to the operational needs of police forces in the field. And what better way is there than to provide specialized training to the users?!
is such an important and intrinsic part of our successful fight against crime, and we have realized the need to include it as one of INTERPOL’s core functions. We will focus on building and enhancing capacity of the police worldwide. It is about providing training and capacity building to our member countries. Our aim is to enhance the capacity of member countries to effectively combat serious transnational crime and terrorism, through the provision of:
This core function includes the sharing of knowledge, skills and best practices in policing through INTERPOL channels and the establishment of global standards on how to combat specific forms of crimes. We will strive to ensure that police in each INTERPOL member country, no matter where it is in the world, has all the necessary tools, skills and mechanisms to effectively prevent and investigate international crime.
Because the law enforcement community’s needs are varied, and because training – as mentioned previously – is key to the successful fight against crime, INTERPOL is developing an INTERPOL Global Learning Center (IGLC). The Center will include an e-learning capacity aimed at providing a comprehensive range of high quality e-learning programs for the police around the world. This is a cost-effective way of providing the wider law enforcement community with the opportunity to further develop their knowledge and skills. Along with the Global Learning Center initiative, we have started this year, on a pilot basis, the INTERPOL International Police Training Program (), where representatives from national police forces come to the General Secretariat for three-month training courses to learn about the practical aspects of international police cooperation. Since the start of the international training program last January, 14 police officers from 13 nationalities, including one officer from the UNMIK INTERPOL Office in Kosovo, has successfully completed the course. Among this group, two police officers came from the African region (Swaziland and Zambia). This coming September, a new batch of seven police officers, of which two will be coming from the African region (Botswana and Namibia), will start the three-month course. We need police officers from EAPCCO countries to apply, and last night I committed one slot to Rwanda’s police force during one of the two classes that will be open in the upcoming year. We believe that expanding training and development is an investment INTERPOL must carry out as it will contribute and enhance international police cooperation to the next higher level.
INTERPOL has increased its crime priority areas. We have decided to include corruption as the 6th of our priority areas. We consider this an important, bold but necessary step. Corruption diminishes the ability of law enforcement agencies to accomplish their mission and hinders the efficient and fair functioning of society. This is particularly so when corruption influences the activities of law enforcement itself. To enhance our work in this area, we are establishing the INTERPOL Anti-Corruption Academy in Austria, which will be composed of international experts coming from both Academia and law enforcement and will do research and provide training in this area to our member countries. In July, the Austrian government and INTERPOL signed the headquarters agreement for the Anti-Corruption Academy in Vienna. This is a significant step forward in making this initiative a reality.
To further gather expertise in the key priority crime areas, INTERPOL is working on the establishment of Global and Regional Anti-Crime Centres. These centers will develop programs on police training, provide police expert advice on a needs-assessment basis, as well as criminal analysis, investigative and incident management support. Through these Regional Anti-Crime Centres, which will be located in the different INTERPOL Sub-Regional Bureaus, INTERPOL will be able to deliver its global anti-crime programs tailored on regional needs, including those regions where the daily law enforcement challenges are the greatest. We would like to move beyond project-based only approach to giving support to member countries, to a more customized operational support based on their current needs and policing challenges. In this way, we hope to fully address the operational capacity gaps of some of our member countries.
To conclude, as law enforcers, we should always keep abreast of the new global crime developments and emerging threats in order to respond accordingly. There is a need for all of us to always remain a step ahead, to anticipate and to adjust to any new trends emerging from international crime. This is why INTERPOL will never cease to refine its role and functions to find ways to better serve you, here in Africa, or in any part of the world. Mr. Minister; Mr. Chairman, my esteemed EAPCCO Chiefs of Police; and my dear colleagues from the EAPCCO region, I wish you a very successful meeting. Lastly, let me express my congratulations to the outgoing EAPCCO Chairman, Mr. Kale Kayihura, the Inspector General of the Ugandan Police, for a job that was very well done – to say the least - and my best wishes to the incoming EAPCCO Chairman, the Commissioner of the Burundi National Police, Mr. Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni, and my appreciation, Mr. Chairman, for graciously hosting this event and giving me the opportunity to experience the hospitality and kindness of the Burundian people. I wish everybody a successful 9th EAPCCO Annual General Meeting. Thank you very much.
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