Good afternoon fellow ANDEX members, colleagues, and friends!
By way of introduction, I am Ibrahim Ashraf and on behalf of the Government of Maldives, as this year’s Chair of the Asian Network for Document Examination, I am pleased to welcome you to the webinar today.
I am delighted to convene this meeting today together with IOM’s Document Examination Support Center (DESC). Preventing irregular migration is at the forefront of our respective agendas as immigration authorities and IOM’s Verifier Travel Document and Bearer has been a highly useful tool for our Immigration Officers to detect fraudulent documents and imposters at secondary inspection.
This Webinar will showcase the upgrades made to IOM’s Verifier TD&B and provides an opportunity for users and partners across the region to ask questions and strengthen our regional network of experts.
Following the success of the 6th ANDEX Annual Meeting earlier this year, where delegates shared best practices in document examination and emerging challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are gathered once again to address the ongoing needs of Member States and fulfill our collective commitment to information sharing. Based on the evaluation following the ANDEX meeting, many of ANDEX fellow members voiced an interest in receiving additional information on the Verifier TD&B, IOM-developed secondary inspection system.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank IOM for their long-standing partnership, in particular, the DESC team, which continues to strive to provide operational and analytical programming, including enhancements to their systems and tools, to better support the emerging needs of ANDEX participating countries.
Today, the DESC team will be presenting several upgrades that have been made to the Verifier TD&B. Some of these upgrades were inspired by your valuable feedback as ANDEX Members, for which I would like to extend my sincere thanks as Chair. Without your active and pro-active full participation, including the sharing of your suggestions, questions, concerns, and experiences, systems like Verifier TD&B would not exist.
The DESC team will present the upgrades shortly and it is my hope that you find them helpful.
I look forward to hearing from the DESC team and participating in, what I am sure will be, a fruitful information sharing session.
Thank you!