October 12th, 2023 – The fourth meeting of Community of Law Enforcement Practitioners (COLEP) gathered 24 law enforcement officials and experts from 9 member countries of COLEP in Sofia, Bulgaria on 5-6 October 2023. The meeting was held in-person back-to-back with the Budapest Process Thematic Meeting on Integrated Border Management. Senior representatives of Bulgaria and Iraq co-chaired both meetings in their capacities as co-chairs of the Budapest Process Thematic Working Group on Law Enforcement Cooperation (TWG-LE) and COLEP.
In previous COLEP meetings, participants have expressed the need to improve capacities on:
- (Trans-)national investigations: conducting timely and action-oriented trans-national information sharing and collaboration to effectively investigate trans-national cases (i.e., engaging each other more via set up of a network of focal points and where needed Joint Investigation Teams);
- Identifying victims of trafficking by better implementing trafficking victim identification procedures and standard operating procedures.
