News & Noteworthy

Just as the summer heat cools, so too have activities at the West Africa Regional Training Center (WARTC) after a busy summer schedule. Since its inception in 2012, approximately 3,399 Law Enforcement professionals have passed through the halls of the WARTC. An important pillar of the West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative (WACSI) is to facilitate lasting relationships to buttress the future impact of our programming. For this reason, CTP actively invests in employing Alumni Coordinators to foster connections formed while at the center. One of the outreach tools to facilitate collaboration and information sharing among participants is the Alumni portal found on the WARTC website. Over the past several years, WARTC staff has engaged alumni through daily emails and via a monthly newsletter featured on the West Africa Regional Training Center website (www.westafricartc.org), which has paid great dividends for the program. We are elated to hear stories of cross border collaboration leading to successful investigations and the resolution of cases, as a result of connections made while at the WARTC. We would like to highlight the invaluable contributions of one WARTC staffer, Ms. Sarah Dadson who recently departed to pursue a master’s degree at New York University. Sarah kept alumni activities up and running during a staffing gap and her contributions were key in helping to double the staff handling alumni coordination activities. We wish her the very best in her future endeavors and hope our paths may cross again.

Commodity classification is critical. In fact, we call it Job #1 since most of your compliance requirements are based on these determinations. But classification projects are not all the same. Most companies use the “surge” approach, tackling the entire inventory all at once, be it dozens, hundreds or thousands of items. Other companies, for various reasons, can’t process everything at once and must rely instead on the “flow” method of classifying items only when they enter the Order Processing system. Both are valid and effective methods, giving companies the licensing requirements they need, but to help you pick your strategy, we’ll walk you through the pros and cons of wholesale “surge” classification versus the “flow-through” basis.

On August 17, 2016, the Bureau of Industry and Security and the Department of State published final rules (here and here) to harmonize the Destination Control Statement (DCS) required under §758.6 of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and §123.9 under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) respectively. As part of Export Control Reform (ECR) efforts, the agencies have sought to harmonize regulatory provisions that are intended to achieve the same purpose. The DCS is one example of an area where interagency coordination should reduce the burden on exporters.

Greetings from the RTC! We’ve been in full swing despite it being the rainy season here in Accra. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) sponsored two courses on Advanced Narcotics Investigation and Equipment Training while the Department of State, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (DoS/INL) sponsored a course on Fisheries Enforcement and Prosecution.

We often get this question from prospective clients, even before we know anything about the items on their list. This is like taking your car to a mechanic and asking, “How much to fix my car?” Since he doesn’t yet know what’s wrong, the mechanic can’t know how long it will take to fix.