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17th Arab Conf. on border security kicks off in Tunisia

TUNIS, Oct 30 (KUNA) -- The 17th Arab Conference of Heads of Borders, Airports, and Ports Security kicked off Wednesday at the General Secretariat of the Council of Arab Interior Ministers in Tunisia, with the participation of official border security agencies from Arab states' interior ministries, including Kuwait.
The League of Arab States, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, and Naif Arab University for Security Sciences participated at the conference, with the aim of enhancing communication between border security agencies in Arab countries to confront security threats.
In his opening speech, Secretary-General of the Council Mohammad Koman said that Arab countries face major challenges related to cross-border security amid the tension and armed conflicts in the region and the world, forcing thousands of civilians to migrate and seek asylum.
He pointed out that smuggling methods have taken on new forms, including drones and submarines, which requires coordinating efforts to confront them and sharing best practices among Arab countries to address them.
He explained that the General Secretariat of the council is working to cooperate with counterpart security bodies in regional groups such as the African Union and the European Union.
Koman indicated that the situation is getting worse due to the world suffering from high cost of living and climate fluctuations that threaten traditional development patterns, saying that this would increase the misery of many, force them on the paths of illegal immigration, and lead them to fall prey to terrorist and crime organizations.
He explained that Arab countries are more exposed than others to the problems of drug trafficking, migrant smuggling and human trafficking due to the geographical location of the Arab world between source and destination countries.
The conference would discuss a number of important topics, including a mechanism for communication between national operations rooms for border security in Arab countries. It would also review the experiences of member states in the field of linking border crossings within the country, and in the field of confronting the use of drones and submarines in smuggling, as well as consider the results of the work of the Second Euro-Arab Border Security Conference.
Representing Kuwait at the conference Brigadier Yousef Saeed Al-Azmi, Brigadier Abdullah Mohammad Al-Ajmi, and Brigadier Ahmad Mustafa Khan. (end) sbm.ao