Secretariat - Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities

The Co-ordinator's Office has published on 22 February 2012 a Handbook of Best Practices at Border Crossings: A Trade and Transport Facilitation Perspective, it is available in English, and a Russian translation is underway. The handbook has been developed in co-operation with the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
 

By promoting existing best practices in the field, the Handbook's main purpose is to assist OSCE participating States, particularly landlocked countries with limited access to world markets, in developing more efficient border and customs policies.
 

The handbook is expected to become a reference document for:

• national policy-makers
• senior customs and border guard/police officials
• heads of regional customs chambers/border crossing points.

It will also be accessible to representatives of transport agencies, the business community, civil society and academia.

The publication focuses on border-crossing points along roads and railways, and at sea and airports. More concretely, it will aim to:

• support the drafting of border management policies,
• promote a balanced approach, paying due attention to facilitation as well as security facets of border crossings,
• highlight concrete and practical examples from across the OSCE region on how border-crossing points can be made more efficient, promoting legitimate trade and transport, while reducing opportunities for corruption, illicit trafficking, and transnational crime and terrorism,
• foster further dialogue on these issues in the OSCE region.

The handbook will be distributed to the Permanent Delegations to the OSCE in Vienna as well as OSCE field presences.

Regional preparatory meetings have been held in Minsk and Bishkek in October 2008.