Regional Operational Center in Khartoum in support of the Khartoum Process and AU-Horn of Africa Initiative (ROCK)

People are suffering due to traffickers and smugglers who are making enormous amounts of money through exploitation with no care for the safety of those they move. Many migrants are victims of extortion, torture, detention for ransom, sexual violence and exploitation, forced labour and domestic servitude. Migrants are dying every day.

According to a study by Europol in 2017, activities by these criminal networks represent between 4.7 and 5.7 billion Euros a year, making it one of the largest and most widespread sources of profit for organised crime.

Setting up the “Regional Operational Centre in support of the Khartoum process and the AU Horn of Africa Initiative – ROCK” is one of the concrete responses to fight these criminal networks and to stop further victimization.

The ROCK is 52 months, 5M€ project implemented by Civipol for the benefit of a consortium of European Union Member States (EU MS), made of France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain as associate partner and Germany as an observer, and in partnership with INTERPOL and the African Union.

The ROCK is being set up for the countries of the Khartoum process and the AU Horn of Africa Initiative, which are Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, Uganda.

The ROCK, located in Khartoum, Sudan, is a law enforcement project. Its objective is to fight criminal networks involved in human trafficking and migrant smuggling and to mitigate the dangers and often fatal consequences that migrants face in the hands of the smugglers. 

The strategy of the ROCK is to enhance the capacities of the Criminal Investigation Departments (CID) of the General Directorates of National Police forces of partner countries to dismantle criminal networks involved in human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

Its main tactic is to share more law enforcement-related information and to do so more quickly among the partner countries’ CIDs which are in charge of combating human trafficking and migrant smuggling.

To do this, liaison officers (LO) from each CID of the beneficiary countries are to be brought together at a single site wich is : The ROCK (Regional Operational Center in Khartoum).