SEESAC Attends SEPCA Meeting in Belgrade

Police cooperation in Southeast Europe has been significantly strengthened through the work of the Southeast Europe Police Chiefs Association (SEPCA) since its establishment in 2002.

With this as a background, SEPCA held an “Extraordinary Meeting of the General Assembly” on 3-4 December 2013 in Belgrade, Serbia in order to discuss several important issues such as reorganization and future status of SEPCA and its cooperation with partners. SEESAC was invited to take part in the discussion.

Fruitful cooperation between SEESAC and SEPCA begun in 2009, when SEPCA initiated and SEESAC supported the establishment of the Women Police Officers Network in South East Europe (WPON). 

SEESAC Coordinator, Dr. Ivan Zverzhanovski took to opportunity to underline the achievements made by WPON.  Given SEPCA’s scope of work, Dr. Zverzhanovski also informed the participants about SEESAC’s achievements and future plans in the realm of combating proliferation and illicit trafficking of small arms and light weapons in the South East Europe.

Furthermore, participants were informed about the recent joint initiative of the law enforcement and judicial authorities of the Republic of France, the European Commission Firearms Task Force, EUROPOL and SEESAC, which aims to lead to the establishment of the South East European Firearms Experts Network.

Finally, Dr. Zverzhanovski mentioned SEESAC’s plan to initiate a study on the feasibility of linking weapons registration and record-keeping systems in the Southeast Europe which could pave the way for increased regional coordination and cooperation with regards to the tracing of weapons.

Read Dr. Zverzhanovski’s address.