Bangkok –  IOM this week (21/11) handed over a new online learning portal to The Royal Thai Police Cadet Academy to improve police training in specialized fields including migrant smuggling, trafficking in persons and transnational organized crime. 

The portal was developed to complement a set of training materials jointly developed by IOM and the Academy to cover 16 of 28 modules comprising the Bali Process’ Curriculum on Standardized Induction Training for Frontline Border Officials.

“Irregular migration induced by smugglers and traffickers undermines the security of states and puts migrants in vulnerable and exploitative situations. Cadets who go on to become trained police officers will be well-placed to intercept and intervene to ensure the safety and protection of vulnerable migrants,” said IOM Thailand Chief of Mission Dana Graber Ladek.

The handover ceremony also marked the completion of the third phase of a Canadian-funded IOM project: Strengthening Border Management and Intelligence Capacity of Thai Government Officials.

The project, which aims to help reduce Thailand’s vulnerability to threats posed by transnational crime, has trained 613 officers and 57 trainers from the Royal Thai Police, its constituent bodies and other government agencies since August 2016. 

The trainings were designed to help officers to intercept and investigate cases of human smuggling, trafficking and other transnational crimes. They covered key areas including fraudulent travel document detection, cyber security, information management, inter-agency cooperation, and victim identification and assistance.

A further 55 immigration and police officers from neighbouring Cambodia, Malaysia and Myanmar also took part in trainings on international policing and cooperation conducted jointly with the Thai Immigration Bureau. 

The project also addressed border management with the introduction of five Verifier Travel Document and Bearer (TD&B) workstations at Thai border checkpoints. Developed by IOM, the Verifier TD&B is an automated, standalone system designed to help border control officers conduct secondary inspections quickly and efficiently.

A total of eight Verifier TD&B workstations are now in operation at key border checkpoints across Thailand, including Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Don Mueang International Airport, Chiang Mai International Airport, Phuket International Airport, Nong Khai checkpoint, Sadao checkpoint and Aranyaprathet checkpoint.

Since the TD&B system was first introduced in Thailand in 2014, 215 cases of fraudulent passports and 154 cases of imposters have been identified by the authorities. 

Effective border management and tackling transnational crime, including illicit drug trafficking, trafficking in persons and migrant smuggling are priority areas for Thailand, which shares land borders with Malaysia, Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Myanmar.

For further information please contact IOM Thailand. Dana Graber Ladek, Email: dgraber@iom.int, Tel: +66 2 343 9301 or Reuben Lim, Email: rlim@iom.int, Tel: +66 2 343 9370