Ecomessage Award

Interpol’s Ecomessage Award comes with a prize sponsored by IFAW valued at US$30,000.
 
“By recognizing Cameroon and Hong Kong, Province of China as the 2007 award recipients, Interpol wishes to acknowledge that in utilizing the Ecomessage system, these agencies were directly responsible for the dismantling of a significant organizational structure perpetrating the illegal trafficking of large amounts of raw ivory from Africa to Southeast Asia,” said Peter Younger, Program Manager for the Interpol Wildlife Crime program. “Their willingness to contribute information and quantifiable data has enabled the Interpol General Secretariat to conduct an analysis  that revealed the depth and breadth of this organizational structure, information which will be invaluable to a number of member countries in further enforcement work to combat the illegal trade in ivory.”
 
The award was presented at an official reception held by Germany in The Hague, in its capacity as current President of the European Union and on the occasion of the 14th meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
 
Ecomessage was created by Interpol in the 1990s as a reporting system to improve sharing of wildlife crime information among international wildlife law enforcement agencies. It was designed to facilitate the efficient transmission of critical data to the Interpol General Secretariat in Lyon, France.  IFAW’s sponsorship of the Ecomessage Award and its collaboration with Interpol on the development of a guidebook on Ecomessage are provided in recognition of the costs of compliance with the reporting system as well as its significant benefits. 
 
Interpol and IFAW both distribute an Ecomessage packet containing information and instructions on how to report in Interpol’s four working languages - Arabic, English, French and Spanish - to all CITES Management Authorities and selected wildlife law enforcement agencies worldwide. 
 
Kenya, the recipient of the first Ecomessage Award in 2004, applied its prize to an enforcement training program for the agency’s staff.
 
About Interpol
Interpol is the largest international police organization in the world. It was set up in 1923 to facilitate cross-border criminal police cooperation and today has 182 member countries spread over five continents. It supports and assists all organizations, authorities and services whose mission is to prevent or combat international crime.