Working Group Meeting on Maritime Security for Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam

Aimed of enhancing investigative resources and specialized forensic capabilities, improve information sharing amongst maritime law enforcement agencies in the region and strengthen national and regional maritime law enforcement cooperation in order to combat terrorism, piracy, and armed robbery, and reduce the vulnerability of ships and port facilities from security risk, a working group meeting on Maritime Security for Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam was successfully conducted at Melia Hotel, Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam on 9-10 October 2017.

The meeting which was hosted by INTERPOL was attended by 25 representatives coming from the aforecited countries, Canada, the INTERPOL, and the ASEANAPOL. The occassion was graced by the attendance of H.E. Ping Kitnikone, Ambassador of Canada to Vietnam and Major General Tran Duy Thanh, Deputy Director of the Foreign Relations Department, Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam, who both gave their respective supports and inspiring remarks during the Opening Program.

The meeting was held in consonance with the implementation of INTERPOL’s Project Mast- a two-year program funded by the Government of Canada to strengthen investigative resources and specialized forensic capabilities, improve information sharing amongst national and regional law enforcement agencies using INTERPOL’S policing capabilities, and enhance maritime law enforcement cooperation in the Southeast Asian region.

Targetting four beneficiary countries- Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam, it initiates the expansion of the recently concluded capacity building projects for port and maritime security in Malaysia and the Philippines, hoping to bring together the maritime law enforcement community of the four beneficiary countries, including key decision makers, investigators, frontline officers, maritime security experts, and INTERPOL National Central Bureaus (NCBs), providing the agencies concerned with the opportunity to strengthen their cooperations in regional waters.    

The workshop was very fruitful, the participants enabling not only of sharing ideas, experiences, lessons learnt and best practices with each other but also gave them the chance of exploring possible cooperation and coordination processes in the pursuit of a better maritime security cooperations which could be gleaned on the results of the breakout sessions presented during the outputs presentations.

The ASEANAPOL Secretariat was represented by the Director for Police Services Police Senior Superintendent Ferdinand RP Bartolome who presented the ASEANAPOL’s Role in Strengthening Maritime Security Collaboration in the Southeast Asia.