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Participants at this week's workshop © TRAFFIC

Participants at this week's workshop © TRAFFIC

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Published 12 April 2019

New secure information-sharing platform for Southern Africa

Johannesburg, South Africa, 12th April 2019—representatives from wildlife law enforcement and management authorities from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting this week in Johannesburg have agreed to establish a Trade in Wildlife Information Exchange (TWIX) secure platform to promote information-sharing and collaboration between agencies engaged in tackling illegal wildlife trade and related criminal activities. 


The new system—to be named SADC-TWIX—will link enforcement officers from SADC countries and will be modelled on the hugely successful EU-TWIX database and information exchange platform used by enforcement officers across Europe for more than a decade, and AFRICA-TWIX, which has been in operation since 2016 in countries of Central Africa. The Seychelles has also expressed in joining SADX-TWIX. 

In the post-meeting SADC-TWIX declaration, delegates outlined the establishment and operation of the system, including plans to establish an advisory group to oversee its smooth running, following a short start-up phase. 

The creation of SADC-TWIX will provide a significant boost to interagency collaboration and information exchange, which are key elements of successful action to counter wildlife crime

SADC-TWIX Project Manager Cynthia Ratzimbazafy. 

SADC-TWIX, like EU-TWIX and AFRICA-TWIX will be managed by TRAFFIC on behalf of the government enforcement agencies. 

Funding to establish SADC-TWIX has been provided by the German government (GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), through TRAFFIC’s project DETER) and WWF France. TRAFFIC is also grateful for the contribution to the workshop provided by Conservation International through their funding from the US Government. 


Notes:

The proceedings of the workshop are now available below.

Workshop Proceedings


About DETER

Germany’s Partnership against Poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade, DETER is supported by the German government’s Partnership against Poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade (in Africa and Asia), implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV.) www.giz.de

WWF

WWF is an independent conservation organization, with over 30 million supporters and a global network active in over 100 countries. WWF's mission is to stop the degradation of the Earth's natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature, by conserving the world's biological diversity, ensuring that the use of renewable natural resources is sustainable, and promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption. Visit www.panda.org/news for the latest news and media resources and follow us on Twitter @WWF_media.