A course organised by OSCE Transnational Threats Department has bolstered the training skills of Ukraine Border Guards, to equip new guards in document fraud detection at border crossing points. The course covered the basic curriculum for assessing top security documents, as well as updated the participants’ previous experience to deploy basic and advanced document fraud detection techniques.
With fraud threats tailgating advanced designs of security documents, the pressure is on border guards to deliver their job to the highest standard or human checks have real risks attached. The group heard about the work of the ICAO working groups from Stephan Chapman, a travel document security specialist from the United Kingdom who formerly represented His Majesty’s Passport Office. He shared confronting insights with participants about some of the past failures of security documents and manual inspections.
Stephan Chapman said “staff engagement is an important element to consider when the security of the documents they (border guards) are responsible for issuing and checking are so much stronger than ever before”. Documents are intercepted by Ukraine’s border guards if suspected of being fraudulent after conducting thorough checks at over 100 border crossing points on the southern and western borders.
He also emphasised that the document creation process should be secure and maintain tight control over document issuance, essential to reducing fraud.
As document fraud escalates into advanced new forgery techniques, a growing network of qualified trainers to supervise localised border personnel is urgently needed alongside growing dependency on technology.
Ten participants worked with two experts from the SBGS Main Forensic Center, who were graduates of an OSCE-led ‘train-the-trainers’ course held in August 2024.
In 2023 alone, border guards intercepted nearly 3,300 forged documents at these checkpoints.
This ongoing project, funded by the United States, supports the OSCE participating States and Partners for Co-operation in reducing illegal border crossings using a fake or stolen identity.
