Border Control in the Greater Mekong Sub-region
Globalization not only increases the frequency and variety of trans‐border movements of goods, capital and people in the legal economy, but that of illegal cross‐border flows as well. As trade restrictions are lifted, enforcement agencies have to improve their capacity to filter cross‐border movements efficiently.
Not only has globalization caused a general increase in legal and illegal cross‐border flows, it has also led to ever more globalized criminal organizations. Organized crime networks, unbound by the constraints of jurisdictions and national sovereignty that limit the range of their opponents in law enforcement, have increasingly transcended the confines of the state. This is of course not a new development, but there has been a change in its dynamic as well as an increase in intensity in recent years.
Organized crime has learned to cooperate. While the hierarchical organizations of the past, which expanded to other countries primarily through large immigrant communities, still exist, they are now complemented (or rivaled) by transnational networks with differing degrees of stability.
Criminal organizations are no longer dependent on a physical presence within a country in order to do business there. Instead of a single organization controlling sources, trafficking routes and market distribution, the trend goes towards multiple, loosely connected and easily replaceable structures that function much like a supply chain in the legal economy. To effectively counter these new networks, border control agencies need to keep up with their adversaries.
Southeast Asia faces similar challenges in regards to organized crime as the rest of the world, and as the next steps of the political and economic integration of ASEAN draw near, the question arises if border agencies in the region are up to the task. There are several examples on record of how regional cooperation in border control and the fight against transnational crime needs to be organized in order to be effective. These indicate that sophisticated, well‐funded criminal networks with a transnational reach can only be reined in by well‐equipped and ‐ trained border officials who share information with their colleagues at a trans‐national level.
Two decades ago, the countries of the Greater Mekong Sub‐region, in cooperation with UNODC, took a first step to increase cross‐border information sharing through the establishment of the Border Liaison Office Mechanism. This effort was later expanded upon by the PATROL project, which aims to strengthen Border Liaison Offices and their staff by providing training and equipment. To be able to track the progress of the project, the PATROL team conducted 5 baseline surveys among border officials in each of the 5 member countries. Their main goal was to establish the state of training and infrastructure at different border sections and measure officer’s perception of the intensity and direction of criminal flows.
This secondary study of these datasets now aims at combining the results of the national surveys into an overview of regional transnational criminal flows and border agencies abilities to counter them. By relying on data collected directly from the officials tasked with border control, we expect to generate a picture of the situation on the ground on which future anti‐trafficking strategies can be built.
To read the full report, please click here.
This report was produced by the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, in Bangkok, Thailand.