Representatives of Ukrainian law-enforcement agencies and members of the Government working group coordinating the implementation of the Programme for the Prevention of Drug Abuse and the Fight against Drug Trafficking in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova (BUMAD Programme) have gathered at an annual meeting and approved in general BUMAD’s activities for 2007. The meeting participants highly praised the Programme’s results and expressed hopes that its planned actions would further enhance Ukrainian counterparts’ capacities to withstand drug-related crimes.
The Head of the Government working group and the Adviser to the Ministry of Interior of Ukraine, Mr. Vasyl Durdynets, chaired the meeting and presented its agenda. The participants agreed to discuss BUMAD’s results and key achievements in 2005-2006 and approve 2007 Annual work plan.
Following the meeting discussion, the participants outlined the following achievements recorded in Ukraine:
Programme helped the Ministry of Health to establish the Ukrainian Medical and Monitoring Centre on Alcohol and Drugs, which is able to perform early prevention and monitoring of narcotic and alcoholic situation in the country.
BUMAD assisted the creation of international information exchange system between the Black Sea ports, which has been agreed by customs authorities of Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. The system is aimed at improving the efficiency of the fight against naval smuggling of drugs.
In December last year, Programme experts assisted in improving the national drug-related legislation, which resulted in adoption of 7 (out of 13) BUMAD-drafted amendments in the law “On drugs and psychotropic substances”, bringing Ukrainian laws in line with the international legal standards.
In the summer 2007 it is planned to complete the creation of an inter agency drug database. The database will be composed through integrating available information resources from the Ministry of Interior, Security Service, State Customs Service and State Border Service of Ukraine. According to the Deputy Chief of the Interior Ministry’s IT Department Mr Vadym Naumov, the fulfillment of this task will grant the law enforcement agencies an access to generalized analytical information. “All this will considerably facilitate the decision making process at a national level and will ensure timely information exchange with our foreign partners,” he added.
“One of the most essential achievements of our fruitful cooperation between the Security Service and BUMAD Programme is the introduction and development of new advanced analytical capacities allowing us to conduct an efficient criminal analysis in the field of international illicit drug trafficking,” Mr Bohdan Sokrut, Assistant to the Chief of the Drug Combating Department of Security Service stated during the meeting.
Based on the reports and discussions on BUMAD results the Governmental Working Group members concluded to positively consider the Programme’s implementation results on both inter-agency and national levels and unanimously approved the annual work plan of BUMAD Programme for 2007.
The meeting participants decided to inform the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine about the results and plans of further implementation of the BUMAD Programme. Moreover, the meeting participants initiated an on-going collection and information-sharing mechanisms to be employed regularly in order to ensure prompt reaction of the Working Group members to react to BUMAD needs, assessment and decision making at the governmental level.
In accordance with the agreements between the Government of Ukraine, the Delegation of the European Commission and the UNDP, the Programme of Assistance for the Prevention of Drug Abuse and Drug Trafficking in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova (BUMAD Programme) has been implemented in Ukraine since 2003. The Programme Partners in Ukraine include the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Interior, Security Service, State Customs Service and State Border Service. The Government working group was created in 2004 for coordination of the BUMAD Programme activities.
The implementation of the BUMAD Programme with the financial and organizational support of the European Union and UN will assist to the Government of Ukraine to raise capacity of national law-enforcement and supervising bodies to carry out their specific tasks, as well as to improve the state policy making mechanism in sphere of the control for drugs situation at a national level. Since 2003 seven BUMAD projects have been implemented in Ukraine with a total budget of over USD 2,000,000.
For further information, please, contact Mr Igor Konopatskiy, Comunications Specialist of BUMAD Programme, tel.: (+38044) 501-42-03. igor.konopatskiy@undp.org.ua
