OSCE trains Mongolian border officers on detecting forged travel documents

A one-week advanced train-the-trainer course on profiling, interviewing techniques and skills to detect forged documents for 15 Mongolian law enforcement officers, organized by the Border Security and Management Unit of the OSCE’s Transnational Threats Department (TNTD/BSMU), took place from 20 to 24 November 2017 in Ulaanbaatar.

The growing volume of new passports and the increasing diversity of travel document security features have made the identification of forgeries during passport checks at border controls more difficult. Consequently, ensuring that border officers are up to date on the latest trends in document fraud is essential to counter the illegal movement of terrorists, criminals and traffickers of all kind.

Participants in the course shared and discussed their experiences on the latest forgery methods and ways to detect forged and false documents. They are now expected to act as national trainers and further disseminate among their peers the skills and knowledge they received during the course.

This course was the second in a series of courses on forged documents that will take place every autumn in Mongolia between 2016 and 2020. It had a strong interactive component, as it included practical work on original, forged and false documents, as well as the use of forensic equipment to identify document forgery.

In order to improve the technical capacity of the Mongolian law enforcement personnel, 15 high-quality hand-held magnifiers and 5 USB microscopes that were used during the course were handed over after the training.

The OSCE has organized similar courses on multiple occasions in more than 25 countries throughout the OSCE region since 2007, in co-operation with document experts from the Austrian Ministry of Interior. The Austrian training material is accepted by the European Agency for the Management of Operational Co-operation at the External Borders (FRONTEX) as a best practice.