213: Colleen Ryan on OSCE and European Border Security

Today, we welcome Colleen Ryan from OSCE, border training and management. We brought her on today to discuss the current challenges of border security in Europe. 

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One CA is a product of the civil affairs association 

and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at CApodcasting@gmail.com 

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

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Special thanks to the site "Rockstar Beats" for the sample of Taylor Seift "Midnight."
Retrieved from: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXyd0iAdUYUWN7ifYYoqymNqJsaE0vEDC&si=-Vp6gUuRpqpHq66D

 

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Transcript:

00:00:04    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA Podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting@gmail.com. Or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www.civilaffairsassos.org. I'll have those in the show notes.

00:00:39    Colleen Ryan
My name is Colleen Ryan. I'm currently the Border Advisor to the OSC in Vienna. I'm seconded by the United States. So I do need to make it clear that I'm not speaking on behalf of the OSC or on the broader political or organizational context right now. I'm specifically focusing on my work and my experiences. Wow. You're seconded? What does that mean? Yeah, I'm essentially loaned out by the U .S. to the OSCE to serve in this role. They pay my salary.

00:01:13    Jack
Nice. How did you get nominated? Where do you normally work?

00:01:15    COLLEEN RYAN
In a past life, I was a police officer back in the U .S. before transitioning to working internationally. So I came to find out about OSCE and opportunities while I was doing my master's back in the States. And then I just ended up applying for the special monitoring mission to Ukraine. So I was out there as a monitoring officer up until Russia's full -scale invasion. And then went back during the war with a non -governmental organization working on humanitarian protection in the South. And then made my way to this current role. That's great. So you've been part of living history in a way. Yeah, to be out in Donetsk up until a couple days before the invasion. Working with border guards all across Europe and the changing security landscape has been an interesting role so far.

00:02:04    JACK GAINES
So you've lived what soldiers call the moment before. There's a feel in the air, and it makes you edgy, it makes you a little twitchy, because you know that you're about to go down with an enemy. And so did you get that sense? Did you get that feel that things were coming close in Donetsk?

00:02:23    COLLEEN RYAN
We were there at the time to monitor the Minsk agreements, which was a ceasefire at the time. It wasn't until when the U .S. evacuated all U .S. personnel that you started to realize that, you know, it may actually happen.

00:02:36    JACK GAINES
Right. And so your current position is now training the border guards of Ukraine.

00:02:44    COLLEEN RYAN
Yes, I manage a project that trains border guards across the OSCE, specifically on detecting porch documents and imposters. So if it's a forged passport presented at the airport or at the road crossing or for the train, we train the border guards, whether it's from Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Albania. So it really depends on the needs of OSC participating states in this realm. It's obviously a field that requires recurrent training because travel documents like passports are constantly updated. that national authorities can stay ahead of forgers. So it is something that we have to continue training on. And with the current war against Ukraine, they have the most need. They're one of the bigger border services in Europe. And then just the need in terms of half their border guard is currently engaged in combat operations, while you have the rest who are working to secure their western and southern borders and the surge in western and southern border crossings with the closure of Ukraine's airspace. You know, all of that contributes to an ongoing need for these skills and updated training on detecting passport forgeries and detecting imposters. And then you see that on the flip side with Moldova, they've seen a surge in the border crossings because a lot evacuated from Ukraine into Moldova. A lot of humanitarian NGOs and other people now fly into Kijanel to go to Ukraine. And so they've seen just a huge... spike in terms of the number of travel documents and also diversity in terms of different countries, different types of documents. And so that's why we've also been training Moldovan border police as well.

00:04:29    JACK GAINES
Sure. So you're there to teach them how to spot forged documents, but is there also a follow on either by that nation's foreign affairs office or their law enforcement that tries to find the forger and remove them?

00:04:43    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah, there is very likely follow on. in terms of criminal investigations when they find forged documents or if they identify an imposter. But our project primarily focuses on those who are working on the first line and second line document checks to just spot the person posing as someone else. And then we do some work with the forensic experts after the fact to make sure that they've got that next level of training as part of their investigations. But primarily it's focusing on the first and second line officers.

00:05:14    JACK GAINES
I'm sure they see all kinds of crazy stuff. Everything from the amateur glue stick to people who actually have passport printer creating forged documents.

00:05:24    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah, it's sad and it's also really interesting, the surge in the use of artificial intelligence and seeing the ways that they're incorporating things like morphing into the passport to their forgeries where two people can now travel on one passport using morphing images and things like that. It really just shows how quickly this field in terms of document forgeries is evolving and how much border services are struggling to keep up and to maintain their training so they can spot these techniques. Right, which is why they're starting to put chips and other special films that have a radio signature and stuff like that.

00:05:53    JACK GAINES
they're starting to put chips and other special films that have a radio signature and stuff like that. You could print it, but to actually find those films or chips that have that radio signature has got to be a lot tougher.

00:06:08    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah, and a lot of it is just down to, like, Order guards are under a lot of stress and pressure and they don't have much time to spot the fakes. They're getting crushed by people. Yeah. So a lot of it is just making sure that they can spot some of these easier to identify orgery trends and to make a quicker decision before it gets to the point of really having to do an in -depth examination of the document.

00:06:32    JACK GAINES
Yeah, I would imagine that you would see forgery trends because people would be going to the same forger and they would be doing similar patterns until that turned away.

00:06:41    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah.

00:06:41    JACK GAINES
And what's it like working with all these different border guards from different countries? I mean, everyone has got to be a little different, but the same.

00:06:49    COLLEEN RYAN
For me, it's interesting because I'm one of the few who has worked in policing, worked in this operational arena, kind of understands a lot of what they've done. And so you kind of speak the same language. It's interesting to hear from them, like what they view as their biggest security challenges and what their biggest day -to -day challenges are in terms of their work life. Because you see common trends across a lot of the services. A lot of them can be underpaid and that contributes to staff turnover. And so then that means you go back to a country to do more training because you have new staffs. But then to see how a country's security... You know, their perspective in terms of their biggest border security threats in Albania, where I trained in June, might be different from Bulgaria, where I trained last month. But, you know, it's still the commonalities of document forgeries, imposters, making sure your airports are secure and things like that. So I like talking with the border guards, such a different perspective across each country. Right.

00:07:51    JACK GAINES
I think that's really helpful that you have a law enforcement background. helps break that ice.

00:07:58    COLLEEN RYAN
I understand the perspective, but we're really just there to help and to fill the gaps that their service might not have the time or the funding to provide additional training because they've got the whole spectrum of border security issues to deal with within their service. And so that's where our organization or other international organizations doing these types of projects come in is just fill the gaps and help them develop their capacity. Especially with some other countries we train for where Frontex, maybe they're not working in that country. So then we can help supplement other EU or Frontex or IOM or UN initiatives and help to harmonize border security standards across Europe, South Caucasus, Central Asia.

00:08:45    JACK GAINES
I don't want to just keep circling around Ukraine. Is there any stories you have from some of the other countries you worked with? What's your favorite beer hall story on those?

00:08:53    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah, I mean, most of my stories are with Ukraine because I've trained Ukraine so much. So I'm happy to talk about that. Yeah, I feel very fortunate so far in the last year and a half to have trained almost 50 Ukraine border guards. And I was able to go to meet with their administration and their main forensic center in June to do a needs assessment to see how we could keep supporting. to make sure we weren't duplicating efforts from other international organizations or other bilateral initiatives there because we do know it's a crowded space there.

00:09:28    JACK GAINES
I'm sure talking to them, you could figure out pretty quickly what those border guards needed, even if they were getting training from two or three organizations, if they weren't hitting it on the head. Yeah. And what was nice for us is we were able to actually shadow them on their train from out west as entered from.

00:09:38    COLLEEN RYAN
was nice for us is we were able to actually shadow them on their train from out west as entered from. Shamashil, Poland, and went to Lviv. And so we got to board on the Ukrainian side and just seeing what they're dealing with in terms of doing document checks aboard the trains now and the different challenges they have with that as opposed to what it would be like to check a document at the airport. It's a very different perspective and it gives you insights on things like lighting and being able to see different security features in the passport. With the lighting on the train and the time of day when they're doing the document check, the technical equipment that they have aboard and that may not be connecting to the cell tower or have service as the train moves. And so it gives you a different perspective to actually be there and see it instead of just hearing about it over a Zoom call or in a sterile training environment. And so then building on that. We've been able to take some of those lessons learned and put them into our training where we're encouraging them and reminding them to say, hey, how would you see this in different types of light settings, running different types of simulations, so it more accurately reflects the conditions that they'll be doing the document checks in. So what's coming up next?

00:10:57    JACK GAINES
What's the future of training? Do you have anything interesting coming up that you want to promote?

00:11:02    COLLEEN RYAN
Yes, through the rest of the year, we have a couple more study visits. And these are important because they help the border guards to learn from other counterparts. They will look through how this country that they're visiting manages their forgery desk at an airport or in their border service. And it really helps with networking and sharing more information in terms of what they're seeing in terms of detecting trends or alerts on forged documents. We've got a couple of study visits coming up next week. I'll be in Madrid with another group from Ukraine. The following week, I'll be with Albania and Milan. And then a week after that, I'll be in Dublin, Ireland with forensic experts from Ukraine's border service to round out the year. So it's a busy stretch right now. That's very cool.

00:11:50    JACK GAINES
Do these multinational engagements, do they ever end up with countries with border guards doing a bilateral agreement on border protection? Or do they ever work on... building something like Eurogest, where if they find a forger from multiple countries, they'll work together to try to find out where the route is. Is that multinational cooperation starting to build, or have you seen it?

00:12:14    COLLEEN RYAN
On a smaller level with us, we do see that. So at the operational level with these border guards, even in -country, being able to message colleagues around their own country. Or the experts that do our trainings are active document experts serving in their border service. So now they've got another resource, say, if we're using experts from Spain or the Netherlands or UK or Italy, then these trainees now have another resource to flag potential trends and forge documents or to ask questions if they're unsure. And then, you know, moving ahead, we'll be looking to do some more joint training between two or three countries. Especially if we do it with bordering countries, it will really help that collaboration to, say, connect the two participating states. And now they've got operational contacts to ping across the border to say, hey, we're seeing this. What are you seeing? Things like that. So it's a good opportunity for us to foster that collaboration and increase the information sharing with us through the training or study visits. Right. Because it's so important to have that contact.

00:13:23    JACK GAINES
to have that contact. It's one thing when you see an issue and you want to reach out and you have to make that cold call and figure out who's the right person. It's better if you've made a contact, you know someone from training, you can just say, hey, what's this and what's going on? And they can just plug you in with the right person and then Zoom. You know, a problem's fixed versus making it a whole, oh, you have to talk to our embassy and our embassy has to write our embassy. And so it's great that those kind of cross -border contacts are being made because. Even though so much of Europe is dominated by the Schengen, there's still issues with legal immigration and criminal movement that each country still monitors what's going on and partners. And then those that are outside the Schengen zone, it's just as important for them to actually have that contact so they can partner and work on things to quickly spot forgeries, theft, criminal activity, then stop it before it becomes rampant. So that's awesome.

00:14:22    COLLEEN RYAN
And it's just it's it's the first building block of really increasing that cooperation, especially with your neighboring state and contributing towards that angle of integrated border management and jointly managed VCP. So even being able to have frontline document inspectors from two neighboring countries being able to reach out, that's just your first building block to building that relationship. So, yeah, it's always useful to have those contacts. Must be fun to be in the middle of it. Yeah. And it's really rewarding. To get your group of border officers on day one, you've got 20 to 30 border officers from all across their country, wherever we're training, they're virtual strangers, and to see them learn to open up and engage and to learn from our experts and then start to share some of their challenges with me and to build those relationships, whether it's in a group or with our experts or with OSCE, it's super rewarding because then you just get to keep building from there and asking, okay, what's next? What do you need next in addition to these document trainings? What do your forensic experts need or what do your border control officers need? So, yeah, it's really rewarding to be able to deliver when you've got the funding and you've got the interest of participating states and to help them manage their borders better.

00:15:37    JACK GAINES
You know, we kind of forgot to talk about who OSCE is, Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe. You want to give me a brief overview of what the organization is? Yes. But it does.

00:15:50    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah. So the OSCE is world's largest regional security organization, the state of 57 participating states. And we operate on a consensus -based approach where all participating states have to agree. And we utilize an approach of comprehensive security. And so this really helps us to support our participating states in developing. their security sector and to enhance resilience and to develop capacity to address transnational threats. So my border security management unit is situated within the Transnational Threats Department. So that's our goal is to help participating states build their capacity to confront a wide array of transnational threats that can harm their national security and pan security more broadly. Right. Now, when I think security, I think of NATO.

00:16:38    JACK GAINES
I think of NATO. So you've got to be a little different. NATO is, of course, a military organization that deals with security from conflict, either deterrence or response to conflict or crisis, disaster. What is it that OSCE does in terms of security?

00:16:55    COLLEEN RYAN
Our three dimensions are political, military, economic and environmental, and human dimension. So what you would traditionally think of as human rights. And so being able to take that comprehensive approach opens up. a library of opportunities for us in terms of what we can provide support on. And so my unit's mandate stems from our border security management concept that the OSC Ministerial Council adopted in 2005. So our mandate in terms of border security is pretty broad. And I think our bread and butter really is helping to develop capacity of our participating states and providing technical assistance. I mean, our unique added value is that we can provide this tailored approach and we're pretty responsive when participating states do approach us with needs. So it's a bit different from NATO since we're not providing military support. We're looking at long -term institutional capacity buildings, whether it's in border security, policing, security sector agencies. That's the core of our work. And can you talk about what the application process was like to get involved? It's different for each job. So OSC, you either have secondments, like when I am on, where your national authority nominates you, or you have the professional contract where OSC directly hires you. So for mine, I had to apply through my seconding authority in the U .S., and I was competing amongst the Americans who wanted to be nominated. And so then once I got past that, then the U .S. put my name forward in the process, and then it was straight into the OSC hiring process. It's a written exam, and then it was an oral interview, and then it's shortlisted, and you go from there. But if it's a contracted offer, obviously you skip the secondment stage of it, and it's applying straight to OSC in the typical HR process. So it's a little different. You just have to look at the job posting and if it's a secondment or not.

00:19:01    JACK GAINES
They give you a salary.

00:19:02    COLLEEN RYAN
Do they give you a housing allowance?

00:19:02    JACK GAINES
give you a housing allowance?

00:19:04    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah, it's about when I was paying in the U .S. The really fun expense was moving my cats over. So that it's a week in a housing allowance. But it's different for contracted. So it really just depends on which job you're going for, contracted or second.

00:19:22    JACK GAINES
Had you traveled internationally before you joined this position?

00:19:26    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah, I had traveled quite a bit. Back when I was still a police officer, I liked to take my leave time to go over to Europe. So I did travel a bit. But never officially. It was always first travel. It was always tourist travel. Yeah, no, I had very, very little duty travel as a cop.

00:19:43    JACK GAINES
But I bet that travel helped with your application to say, yeah, I've been to Europe and I've toured around, even though I was a tourist.

00:19:50    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah, and travel is just a great educator. And I know it's expensive and not everyone can do it. Travel just gives you good life experience, especially if you're doing it solo and traveling in Europe and interacting with different cultures and just finding your way and being able to navigate and step outside of your American comfort zone. If you're looking to work internationally, in addition, obviously, to the job experience and language and whatnot, travel is just such a good educator and a good way to end your horizons. Right. And I'll tell you what, traveling and living someplace,

00:20:23    JACK GAINES
living someplace, It's a whole new experience because you learned the trains when you traveled, but now you got to find out, get a lease and what that takes.

00:20:32    COLLEEN RYAN
Yeah. And then if you don't speak German or you don't speak the local English, that adds another layer of complexity. So yeah, you're absolutely right. The difference between living somewhere and traveling is huge.

00:20:43    JACK GAINES
But it's fun. And actually, once you've lived overseas, you start to do quirky things, I find. Like, I'll travel and I'll go to a grocery store just to see how they do their business there. Yeah. You know, you go to restaurants, but see how laundry is done or, you know, just how the public services are done because you think, man, if I had to live here, I'd have to drag my trash to the backyard this time. Or over here, they take it on the street or the Germans, they have to have a lockbox.

00:21:12    COLLEEN RYAN
What's been really interesting for me is my American friends hear me speak now and they think I'm starting to lose my accent and I can't tell where I'm from or I'll... interact with Europeans over here and they can't quite pick up on my American accent and I think I'm from the UK or Ireland or Australia. So that's been a really interesting experience because I don't think about it. I just talk and just the little things that come when you're living abroad.

00:21:37    SPEAKER_00
Okay. I think we got everything we wanted. Is there anything left that you want to draw on the table?

00:21:44    COLLEEN RYAN
As I've mentioned, I firmly believe that any type of security cooperation, defense cooperation is built on relationships and trust. And so there's two of the Ukrainians in particular that I've become close with because they joined our training last year. And then this year they served as trainers for us and they've joined a few study visits. And so through that, we've developed trust and become friends. So now it's gotten to a point where they know I'm a huge Swifty. Oh, no.

00:22:14    SPEAKER_01
no.

00:22:16    COLLEEN RYAN
You're a Swifty? Yeah.

00:22:16    SPEAKER_01
a Swifty?

00:22:19    COLLEEN RYAN
So they'll ask, oh, what's the Taylor Swift song we should listen to for this trip? Or what's your favorite Taylor Swift song these days? And it's just a funny example of how this all starts with just building those relationships and getting people's trust when you're working with your partner nations. Sure.

00:22:38    SPEAKER_01
I thought maybe you brought Taylor Swift to the border and you couldn't get her across.

00:22:44    COLLEEN RYAN
No, but I did give them Taylor Swift friendship bracelets when I was in Ukraine in June.

00:22:50    SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh. I was going to say, next time you see them, they'll be like, hey, still have my Taylor Swift. They had them in London last week, so they still have them.

00:22:57    COLLEEN RYAN
week, so they

00:23:02    SPEAKER_01
They probably feel obligated, like I can't take it off. She'll think less of me.

00:23:10    SPEAKER_01
It was quite funny. Cool.

00:23:14    SPEAKER_01
But yeah, you're right. It's those relationships, right? You build them and then you can reach out and the people are there. It's so much easier than a cold call. So much easier. That's half the job.

00:23:25    COLLEEN RYAN
On one hand, you can joke about Taylor Swift, but then on the other, they can come to you with more training needs or more requests for specific areas of engagement.

00:23:34    SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they know they're safe to do it. Yeah, exactly. By just talking to you. Yeah.

00:23:39    SPEAKER_01
Well, cool. Okay. Well, I got it. And I will say just one more thing that I should mention.

00:23:43    COLLEEN RYAN
I will say just one more thing that I should mention. I'm able to do all this work because I'm very lucky that the U .S. mission has fully funded my project and recognize the importance of OSCE as a multilateral line of effort to strengthen international security and broaden our engagement. Honestly, the amount of funding they've given me has been a huge boost and really made this work possible. So I feel like I have to give them a shout out here.

00:24:11    SPEAKER_01
Cool. All right, Coley. Well, thanks a bunch. All right.