Participants at the Third Regional Assistance and Protection Full Training Cycle for GRULAC States Parties, which was held in Colombia from 4 to 8 April 2016.
The Third Regional Assistance and Protection Exercise for States Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean was held from 4 to 8 April 2016 in Bogotá, Colombia. It was the closing stage of the third assistance-and-protection full training cycle that started in March 2015 for a group of 30 participants-first responders from the Latin American and the Caribbean (GRULAC) region.
The course was co-organised by the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW and the Government of Colombia with direct engagement of the National Directorate of Fire-fighters of Colombia (DNBC), and the Colombian National Police.
Though different field exercises of growing complexity, participants reaffirmed and consolidated previously acquired knowledge and skills in the use of individual protective equipment, reconnaissance, detection, sampling, decontamination and response to attacks with chemical warfare agents or incidents involving toxic industrial chemicals.
As a result of this training, a new reference team of 30 first responders from 15 States Parties from the GRULAC region will contribute to the strengthening of their response capabilities through their assimilation into the national response teams, spreading the obtained knowledge and skills nationally and regionally, and through their integration into the growing regional network of OPCW trainees under the umbrella of Article X of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The participants of the training came from Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Saint Lucia.