East African Community Regional Green Customs Conference

Name: East African Community Regional Green Customs Conference
Start: 2024-01-24
End: 2024-01-25
Location: Rwanda

24 - 25 January 2024

Kigali, Rwanda

Overview
Documents

Background

Participants

The East African Community (EAC) regional green customs conference is organized by the secretariat of the Green Customs Initiative (GCI), hosted by UNEP, and the Kenya School of Revenue Administration (KESRA). The conference will focus on three key areas: development of green customs curriculum within the region; implementation and enforcement of trade-related multilateral enforcement agreements (MEAs) in EAC; and trade facilitation related to enforcement of MEAs.

The conference provides an opportunity for sharing knowledge and experiences on green customs. It also provides a forum to engage more countries in the region to develop national curricula for training customs and border control officers on their country’s international obligations under the trade-related MEAs. By building their capacities, customs and border control officers can contribute to the fight against environmental crime and prevent illegal trade through effective identification, detection, monitoring and interception of illegally traded environmentally sensitive commodities, contributing to increased compliance levels of trade-related MEAs in the EAC region.

Date: 24 and 25 January 2024

Venue: Sainte Famille Hotel, KN 1 ST Kigali, Rwanda

Introductory message from UNEP Law Division Director, Patricia Kameri-Mbote:

Participation is by invitation only.

English will be the working language of the conference.

Contact Ms. Jackline Wanjiru (jackline.wanjiru@un.org) / Valentina Ricca (valentina.ricca@un.org)

The GCI is a partnership between international entities to enhance the capacity of customs and border control officers to combat illegal trade in environmentally sensitive commodities, and to facilitate their legal trade. As a recognized forum that fosters necessary cooperation and coordination in addressing such crimes that affect the environment, the GCI secretariat works to support customs officers and regulatory authorities through providing capacity building trainings on implementation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), at regional and national levels, exchange workshops between customs and regulatory authorities, as well as to support the development of national and regional green customs training curricula globally. By increasing knowledge about these environmental issues and relevant conventions and MEAs that apply to them, the GCI partnership enhances the skills and capacity of customs officers in MEAs’ implementation and enforcement.

In this context, KESRA and the GCI secretariat are working together to develop a Green Customs curriculum for customs enforcement of trade-related MEAs. The curriculum will be a significant step in guiding custom officers on the relevant measures for MEAs’ compliance. Thanks to this curriculum, KESRA will be able to effectively train the customs and border control officers in Kenya and, possibly, roll out the curriculum within the East African Community Region, in consultation with its counterpart custom administrations.

For more information, please visit: Green Customs Website

Participants will be drawn from seven countries in the region, namely, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda. Each country will have representatives from their Customs training and enforcement departments and their environmental ministries. Representation from the EAC secretariat, relevant UN agencies and MEA secretariats and the World Customs Organization (WCO) is also expected.