On 25 April 2023, the Secretary General of the World Customs Organization (WCO) opened the 86th session of the Fellowship Programme, intended for Spanish-speaking officers. This programme, funded by the Customs administration of Japan and the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), brings together eight fellows from the following administrations: Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Honduras, Morocco and Nicaragua.
On their first day of the programme, the fellows could discuss priorities and topical issues with the WCO Deputy Secretary General, during a roundtable session. The first part of this Fellowship Programme, taking place for four weeks at the WCO Secretariat, is also an opportunity for the fellows to benefit from an 8-day Leadership and Management Development workshop and to draft a modernisation project for their administration, supervised by a WCO tutor. The fellows will then be invited to a field study trip in a partner administration to observe best practices and operations.
This programme is part of the WCO's initiatives to develop the organisational and operational capacities of member administrations and to support their customs reform and modernisation programmes. It is designed to enable promising young managers from member administrations to access and become more familiar with the WCO standards, tools and instruments and to train themselves in leadership and management techniques, to assist them in carrying out reform and modernisation within their respective administrations in a dynamic and sustainable manner.