As Belarus prepares to host the International Ice Hockey Federation world championship on 9-25 May 2014, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) will hold an International Conference on Risk Analysis in Border and Migration Management in Minsk on 11-12 March 2014 to assist the State Border Committee of Belarus to ensure the security of this major international event and the safety of its many fans. The event is funded by the European Union’s SURCAP project and co-funded by the IOM Development Fund’s RANBEL project.

The two-day conference will feature two complementary workshops and gather a wide range of experts from the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union (FRONTEX), border guard officials from Estonia, Finland, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine, officials from the Coordination Council of the Commanders of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Border Troops, and EU, CIS and UN representatives.

The first day of the conference will be fully dedicated to the thorough exploration and discussion of the Report on Border Risks Analysis, which was drafted by SBC on the basis of recommendations and expertise provided by analysts from EU Member States, FRONTEX, Moldova and Ukraine. During the second and final day of the conference, migration management experts will exchange opinions about the ongoing regional trends in Eastern Europe, impacting, inter alia, Belarus and Ukraine, which are the major beneficiaries of the SURCAP project. The main deliverable of the conference will be the finalization of the Report on Border Risks Analysis and its distribution amongst all the project’s stakeholders, as well as relevant border and migration management structures for further consideration and implementation.

The SURCAP project (“Strengthening Surveillance Capacity on the Green and Blue Border between Belarus and Ukraine,” April 2012-March 2014, 765,000 EUR) is being implemented by the International Organization on Migration (IOM) in partnership with the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, which is responsible for the project’s training component. The overall objective of the SURCAP project is to increase overall security at the Belarus-Ukraine border with the specific objective of strengthening surveillance capacity at the green and blue border. The project’s beneficiaries are the border guard agencies from Belarus and Ukraine.