Black Sea Littoral States Border / Coast Guard Cooperation Forum

Official site of a forum bscforum.org

Ukraine, Turkey, Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia, Romania

 

The forum is initiated in 2000 in Turkey; the sessions of leaders of the Forum - heads of border and coast guard agencies are held every year in each Black Sea country in turn.

The primary goals:

   Assistance of peace and stability in the region;

   Development of cooperation between coast guard services with the purpose of prevention of terrorism, drug trafficking, illegal migration and to other kinds of illegal activity;

   Establishment of cooperation in the sphere of protection of biological resources of the Black sea, prevention of pollution and protection of sea environment;

   Coordination of search and rescue activity.

At present within the limits of the FORUM:

The network of information coordination centers in border agencies of coastal countries with headquarters in Bulgaria has been created;

Exchange of information concerning suspicious vessels (since 2002) is conducted;

Mutual friendly visits of the ships to ports of the countries are organized;

Multilateral agreement on Cooperation of border agencies of the Black Sea countries was signed in Istanbul in 2006;

The official flag and logo of the Forum have been adopted;

The Automated system of information exchange has been implemented. It allows border agencies and coast guard services of the Black sea countries to exchange information concerning illegal activities in the Black sea or vessels suspected in illegal activity on-line (since 2007);

annual doctrines on operative information exchange and coordination of actions "the Black Sea hawk" are conducted.

 

The working groups of experts have been created:

In Bulgaria

On development of information exchange and analysis of operative conditions with the purpose of implementation of the best techniques of the Black Sea region

In Turkey

On sea safety and navigation safety with the purpose of working out the algorithm of mutual events with regard to overcoming the threats of safety of navigation in the Black sea

And

on planning of mutual events on personnel training

In Romania

On working out models of possible risks in Black sea

In Russia

On information exchange by means of АСОІ

Presidency in the forum:

2007 - Turkey, 2008 - Bulgaria, 2009 - Romania, 2010 - Ukraine, 2011 - Russia, 2012 - Turkey.

The next meeting of heads of border agencies of the Black Sea forum is planned in Georgia in October, 2012.