From 7 to 11 December 2020, the Latvian State Border Guard College in association with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is running an online training course in dog-handling for 16 officials from the National Dog Handlers Training Centre of the State Customs Committee of Uzbekistan and the National Information and Analytical Centre on Drug Control, a coordinating authority in efforts to counter trafficking of narcotics.
Training for dog handlers puts into practice the decisions made at the 2018 NATO Brussels Summit on strengthening resilience of partner countries and promoting stability in the region. The training course is part of a counter-narcotics training project implemented by NATO and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) since 2016. The Dog Handling Service of the Latvian State Border Guard College and the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs have been working together in the project for several years.
This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the course is being held in a video-conferencing format. It is financed under a cooperation agreement between the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Latvian State Border Guard College on funding for the NATO and UNODC counter-narcotics project in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.