DUSHANBE, October 17, 2012, Asia-Plus — Alekasndr Sychev, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Regional Representative for Central Asia, is arriving on a working visit in Dushanbe tomorrow.
According to the Drug Control Agency (DCA)’s press center, during his stay in Dushanbe, the newly appointed UNODC regional representative for Central Asia will hold meetings with senior representatives of relevant ministries and agencies of Tajikistan as well as chiefs o diplomatic missions of the United States and Japan and heads of the United Nations agencies active in Tajikistan.
UNODC presence in Central Asia began 1993 with the establishment of the UNODC Regional Office for Central Asia in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Today there are Program Offices in all five Central Asian States.
With a traditional emphasis on building capacity in counter-narcotics through technical assistance, UNODC activities in the region link national projects on border control with regional projects developing intelligence analysis systems and joint operations. These include: the Central Asia Regional Information and Coordination Center in Almaty; precursor chemical control; controlled deliveries; national drug control agencies; and mobile interdiction units. All this work is carried out in close cooperation with national and international partners and donors.
Significant trends in the UNODC in recent years have seen the shift towards activities within the crime mandates of UNODC and towards an increasingly regional programming structure. Within the framework of a number of political initiatives concerning Afghanistan and its neighboring countries (such as the Paris Pact and the Rainbow Strategy), UNODC is seeking to build synergy between its drugs and crime mandates.
