New secure information-sharing platform for Southern Africa
Johannesburg, South Africa, 12th April 2019—representatives from wildlife law enforcement and management authorities from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting this week in Johannesburg have agreed to establish a Trade in Wildlife Information Exchange (TWIX) secure platform to promote information-sharing and collaboration between agencies engaged in tackling illegal wildlife trade and related criminal activities.
The new system—to be named SADC-TWIX—will link enforcement officers from SADC countries and will be modelled on the hugely successful EU-TWIX database and information exchange platform used by enforcement officers across Europe for more than a decade, and AFRICA-TWIX, which has been in operation since 2016 in countries of Central Africa. The Seychelles has also expressed in joining SADX-TWIX.
In the post-meeting SADC-TWIX declaration, delegates outlined the establishment and operation of the system, including plans to establish an advisory group to oversee its smooth running, following a short start-up phase.
The creation of SADC-TWIX will provide a significant boost to interagency collaboration and information exchange, which are key elements of successful action to counter wildlife crime
SADC-TWIX Project Manager Cynthia Ratzimbazafy.
SADC-TWIX, like EU-TWIX and AFRICA-TWIX will be managed by TRAFFIC on behalf of the government enforcement agencies.
Funding to establish SADC-TWIX has been provided by the German government (GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), through TRAFFIC’s project DETER) and WWF France. TRAFFIC is also grateful for the contribution to the workshop provided by Conservation International through their funding from the US Government.
About DETER
The DETER project is funded by the German Partnership against Wildlife Crime in Africa and Asia, implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV). https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/66553.html
WWF
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