The third meeting of the ENAVSECG Coordination Hub Organon (ECHO/03), a subgroup of the European and North Atlantic Aviation Security Group (ENAVSECG) tasked with aligning capacity building activities in the EUR/NAT regions by mapping available resources and linking them with States' prevailing needs, was conducted in a hybrid mode from 7 to 8 October 2021 at the ICAO European and North Atlantic (EUR/NAT) Regional Office. The meeting was jointly chaired by Representatives from Kazakhstan, Portugal and IATA.
The ENAVSECG Chairpersons were invited by the ECHO Chairs to participate and make a presentation at this meeting to further support the work of the group as well as to propose some developments and raise awareness on the initiative among States in the EUR/NAT regions and beyond.
The presentation triggered fruitful discussions and led to a number of proposed actions such as the development of a webinar to familiarize States in the region (and beyond) with the idea and prevent misunderstandings. ECHO is not a new capacity building initiative, it is a working group tasked to develop a mechanism which can help States to easily match their needs with already available capacity building activities.
The ICAO EUR/NAT Secretariat shared the results of the regional capacity building mapping exercise and the collection of information on States' prevailing Aviation Security as well as COVID-19 recovery needs that emerged from the pandemic. The data collection was conducted based on an ICAO State Letter inviting States to list available capacity building material on the one hand and their needs on the other.
Based on the outcome of the mapping exercise, it was clear that States have a need for further capacity building activities and are looking for support, e.g. in the areas of Aviation Security Screening Equipment, Cybersecurity, Quality Control and Landsite Security, to name a few. The meeting also underlined that some of the existing capacity building tools are already matching several of the identified areas of concern, they just needed to be known. States reiterated the importance of international cooperation, sharing of experience and exchange on best practices which the ECHO initiative will help to strengthen /reinforce.
The ICAO Secretariat provided a variety of contributions dealing with updates on the Global Aviation Security Plan (GASeP), the analysis of the level of effective implementation of Annex 17 SARPs in the EUR/NAT regions as well as an overview of the weaknesses identified based on the outcomes of audits conducted under the ICAO Universal Aviation Security Audit Programme (USAP-CMA). Furthermore, an update was given on the work undertaken to create an online platform to host the capacity building mapping tool and make it easily accessible. The link between the work of the ECHO group and the ICAO AVSEC Panel WG on Training (WGT) was kept via participation of the chairlady of this WG and her regular updates with regards to the developments in this group.
The third meeting of the ECHO initiative was attended by 15 members representing 9 States and 5 international/regional organizations. The outcome of the meeting, as well as the proposed actions to be taken will be reported for approval to the ninth meeting of the ENAVSECG (ENAVSECG/09) which will be conducted as a virtual meeting 7-10 December 2021.
The fourth meeting of ECHO will be conducted in spring 2022.
