Articles under section " Dossier: Protecting Society "

Every year, the WCO chooses a theme for the Organization and the global Customs community. It provides focus and serves as a source of inspiration to keep Customs striving toward greater effectiveness. It also helps to remind us of our priorities and encourages us to align our efforts, understanding...

Customs as a shield against a wide range of threats Customs administrations collectively are entrusted with the regulatory management of the flow of global trade and are expected to support multiple governmental imperatives simultaneously: border security, revenue collection, economic growth, and ...

The challenges of synthetic drug trafficking The rapid evolution of the illicit synthetic drug market in recent decades presents a severe challenge for drug control, the rule of law and public health. Newly emerging synthetic drugs and new psychoactive substances (NPS) can be many times more poten...

Adding the technology stack The INCB contributes to the WCO initiative through its Global Rapid Interdiction of Dangerous Substances (GRIDS) Programme, which coordinates the development of science-based resources, technologies and training for the safe interdiction of fentanyl opioids, specificall...

Three years ago, we wrote in these pages about the security crisis in Haiti and its impacts on Customs. Today, as the crisis continues, stifling the Haitian economy by increasing the cost of international trade transactions, we would like to revisit certain strategies and outline the results achiev...

The 2,150 officials of the General Customs Administration of Haiti (Administration Générale des Douanes – AGD) operate in a dangerous environment. The Directorate General was relocated to the airport office after gangs took control of the port area. Officials assigned to the port rotate between...

In 2025, the State Customs Service of Ukraine recorded 1,173 attempts to import narcotics, psychotropic substances and precursors illegally. Of these, 626 were detected by one of the Service’s 86 canine teams. The teams also helped uncover other types of illicit goods, with 246 seizures involvi...

The Centre was designed for the simultaneous training of 12 to 14 inspector-dog handlers and their service dogs. In 2010, it was relocated to the Ukraine Customs educational institution providing advanced training for employees, located in Khmelnytskyi. Service dogs are selected according to strict...

As global trade volumes continue to grow and supply chains increase in complexity, Customs administrations are confronting threats and risks that extend well beyond traditional revenue, safety, and compliance concerns. Among these is the threat of trade-based illicit financial flows (TB-IFFs) which ...

Why Customs authorities matters Customs authorities occupy a critical, unparalleled position at the intersection of goods, documentation, and trade data. Unlike financial or law-enforcement bodies that may see threat actors or transactions in isolation, Customs can assess how value moves in practi...

Nigeria has made significant strides in combating money laundering, recently being removed from the Financial Action Task Force list of Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring[1] in 2025, and from the EU’s high-risk jurisdictions list.   In October 2025, the Financial Action Task Force...

Nigeria’s cross-border money laundering typologies Criminal proceeds are frequently and increasingly moved from one country to another, which gives law enforcement authorities – and Customs administrations in particular – the opportunity to intervene to confiscate those proceeds and/or prose...

The Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) fully appreciates and understands the risk that corruption poses to the fulfilment of its mandate. Since 2019, it has embedded integrity into its corporate strategy as a means of enhancing its ethical culture, which is ultimately expected to result in reduced malpr...

Despite the efforts made to enhance integrity, there remained a need systematically to measure what was being implemented. While progress was visible, the ZRA decided to continue pursuing a comprehensive framework to assess how integrity was perceived internally and externally, and how reforms trans...

Since 2009, the WCO has been coordinating Operation DEMETER with the aim of equipping Customs officers with the knowledge, tools and cross-border networks needed to address illicit trade related to waste, ozone-depleting substances (ODS) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) with agility and precision. Thi...

Waste trafficking typologies and enforcement challenges Article 9 of the Basel Convention defines the scenarios in which any transboundary movement of waste is deemed illegal traffic. Customs controls focus on verifying the legality of commercial shipments and detecting smuggled goods. Commonly ob...

Across the world, Customs administrations and border authorities are being asked to manage rising volumes of shipments, increasingly complex threats, and more agile criminal networks, often without being granted additional resources. In such an environment, risk management is not a theoretical conce...

A formal foundation, kept alive through routine contact The UK approach is based around a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that sets out what information can be exchanged, for what purpose, and under what safeguards. It is supported by a legal review and a data protection assessment, and it gives...

Mineral export documentation for gold and diamonds often ends up passing through Customs officer’s desks without comment, because they have no way to prove the documents are fake. Officers handle consignments from a great many jurisdictions, each with its own licence formats and signatures; spotti...

Digitalizing export permits at source MCAS has been in use for over a decade in several jurisdictions and was recently deployed at Sierra Leone’s National Minerals Agency (NMA) and Liberia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME). Both countries use it to administer the full licensing chain –...

The recent seizure of 551 kilograms (kg) of cocaine in an aircraft which had landed on a makeshift airstrip underscores the critical role of Belize Customs in the national architecture established to monitor the movements of general aviation (GA). It also highlights the importance of proactive inte...

The aircraft used belong to a category called “general aviation” (GA), which encompasses all civil aviation activities except scheduled commercial airline services and military aviation. In Belize, GA activities include private aircraft operations, charter flights, agricultural aviation, tourism...

With organized crime activities shifting to the smaller airfields used for general aviation, Belgium’s General Customs and Excise Administration (Belgium Customs) has committed itself to information sharing, risk analysis and collaboration with Belgian Defence under the National Airspace Security ...

Information sharing lies at the core of the NASC project. The NASC’s role is to supply to Customs and the Federal Police operational information on flights deemed to be high risk so that they can respond with targeted and efficient action. The project focuses fully on maximizing resources, having ...

The use of non-intrusive inspection (NII) equipment for container control purposes has gradually emerged as a key measure for modernizing the work of Customs administrations around the world. Against a background of increased trade, the growth in transnational crime networks and the demand for great...

Background to and development of the scanning mechanism at the Port of Douala The introduction, back in 2005, of a procedure for scanning containers at the Port of Douala was part of a developing strategy to modernize Customs inspections and measures to secure trade flows. This reform was introdu...

Every day, while Europeans go about their lives, Customs officers supervise the traffic of billions of goods at the EU’s external borders at seaports, airports, and land border crossings. The EU’s Customs Union is a guardian that most citizens will never notice, yet one that touches many goods t...

In fact, the stakes could not be higher. Our EU Customs Union safeguards one of the world’s largest single markets, which provides a shared space for 450 million citizens and 26 million businesses. With a GDP of 18 trillion euros, the EU Single Market is the world’s second-largest economy and th...