Participants at the Second Regional Exercise in Assistance and Protection for GRULAC States Parties held in Colombia
The Second Regional Assistance and Protection Exercise for States Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean was held from 3 to 7 November in Bogotá, Colombia. The course was co-organised by the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW and the Government of Colombia, with the involvement of its National Authority, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Directorate of Fire-fighters, and the Colombian National Police.
The participants acquired knowledge of the proper use of individual protective equipment, reconnaissance, detection, sampling, decontamination and emergency planning. These skills were later practiced and consolidated during the final field exercise.
As a result of this training, a new reference team of 20 first responders from 15 Latin American and the Carribean (GRULAC) States Parties was graduated. This group of experts will now contribute to the strengthening of the response capabilities of the GRULAC region through their assimilation in the national response teams, spreading the obtained knowledge and skills in their home countries, and through their integration into the growing network of OPCW trainees in the region.
The participants of the training came from Barbados, Chile, Colombia, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, St Kitts and Nevis, and Uruguay.
This event closed the second cycle of the OPCW capacity building activities in Assistance and Protection which started in the Dominican Republic, and was followed by another one in Costa Rica this year.