The Office of the Supreme People’s Prosecutor and ILSTA delivered an eight-day course on building the capacity of the southern prosecutors in wildlife crime prevention and prosecution in Savannakhet Province, Lao PDR, from the 23rd August – 1st September, 2022.
In total, 30 participants from the prosecutor’s office in Savanakhet, Khammoune, Bolikhamxay, Attapeu, Champasak, Sekong and Saravan took part in the training. The Office of the Supreme People’s Prosecutor (OSPP) plays a vital role in the Lao PDR’s efforts to end illegal wildlife trade.
The course was designed to increase the awareness of prosecutors to understand the many types of wildlife crime occurring in Lao PDR, and the issues that investigators face in bringing the perpetrators to justice. The training combined theory and law with a practical case study, based on real wildlife trafficking case scenarios.
Participants followed the case from the initial source of information to the arrest of an offender, seizure of illegal wildlife products, identification of additional entities in a criminal network and the presentation of a prosecution case file.
At the closing ceremony Mr Richard Philippart, President of ILSTA, emphasised that Luxembourg attaches great importance to the protection of the environment and wildlife and that ILSTA plans to extend this training to other provinces and additional agencies in the future.
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