The annual Steering Committee meeting of the Western Balkans Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) Control Roadmap Multi-Partner Trust Fund (MPTF) took place on 28 January 2021, bringing together donors and implementing organizations with the aim of reviewing the progress achieved in 2020 and the plans for 2021.

The Steering Committee is the Trust Fund’s decision-making body, comprised of representatives of Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the European Union, as well of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), as the Trust Fund Implementing Organizations. The MPTF Office is also represented in the Steering Committee, as an observer, without voting rights.

This Steering Committee meeting provided an opportunity for its members to meet online and directly listen from the managers of the projects funded through the Trust Fund. Ten projects were presented during the meeting, four initiated in February 2020 within the Trust Fund’s first call for proposals, and six projects recently initiated or planned to be started in the next few months, as part of the Trust Fund’s second call. Projects are funded through the financial contributions of Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Norway to the Trust Fund.

The meeting showed that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the projects under implementation and forced them to readjust or delay activities, significant results were still achieved. These include strengthened capacities for tackling illicit trade of firearms by the Customs Authority and postal agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, improved investigative capacities of illicit firearms in the Kosovo* Police, and better understanding between the gaps of the criminal and procedural law and the UN Firearm Protocol in several jurisdictions in the Western Balkans.