The document, in Spanish, English and French, was signed by Colonel Idaís Borges Barrios, head of the Minors’ Directorate at MININT, and Marie Claude Arsenault, director general of the Canadian Police Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.
The ambassadors of Cuba and Canada, Josefina Vidal Barreiro and Patrick Parisot, in that order, attended the signing ceremony of the agreement, which extends the mutual actions of more than two decades on information exchange, joint investigations and preparation of the police forces.
The text reaffirms the willingness of the two countries to respect the objectives of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. Also, it tackles the Supplementary Protocol to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.
With this bilateral instrument, such operations are formalized and extended to other modalities, including the exchange of experiences among experts and of technologies applied to prevent and combat such crimes.
In 1999, the two Governments endorsed a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in combating drug trafficking, and in 2003 an Agreement on the sharing of confiscated assets or their equivalent funds.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is a federal force that took its name in 1920 and is now led by Brenda Lucki, the first woman to do so since its inception. (Taken from ACN)
