Looking back is easy. We have the records.
Why BORDERPOL was created?
Who were the founders?
What were achievements of the organization?
Where and when were the events held?
In the beginning…..
The idea was conceived in 1998 by this writer during a meeting with European border experts in Estonia.
The main issue that was being discussed at that meeting was why there was no “hub” for border security and migration management at the operational level. Afterall the police community had INTERPOL, the customs community had the WCO and so on. They all had strategic intelligence and information programs that served their members. For me the idea of BORDERPOL was simply a word link of borders and policies. I liked it as did my colleagues at the time and it stuck.
The BORDERPOL project was proposed to be a real time intelligence program for the central European countries to detect and deter illegal immigration and identify criminality involved in human trafficking. In October 2000 a voluntary group of border experts were brought together for international consultations on the subject with four specific counties in central Europe. A prototype was established and funded by a German foundation. It was successfully tested in 2000 with the involvement of the border services of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic. It linked the capital airports of the four countries in a real time data exchange system. It really was ground breaking. All of the equipment and software was off the shelf. Encrypted internet systems were established using inexpensive commercial ISP’s. The data collected was extremely revealing, but that is for another story.
Not everyone liked the idea