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New Faces on Ukraine’s Borders with IOM Support

Kyiv – This week, 600 newly recruited Ukrainian border guards officially started their service at Boryspil airport, Kyiv Central Railway Station and the Krakovets border-crossing point on the Ukraine-Poland border. The new staff were recruited under the New Face of the Border project implemented by the State Border Guard Service (SBGS) of Ukraine, with support from IOM, the UN Migration Agency, and the US Department of State.

“Today we mark an important milestone for the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service, as IOM is honoured to contribute to the establishment of a new transparent recruitment system that allows young professionals, with a good command of English and highest ethical and technical standards, to join the State Border Service,” said Dr. Thomas Lothar Weiss, IOM Ukraine Chief of Mission.

“The new recruitment system represents a critical piece of the Service’s anti-corruption efforts. IOM Ukraine stands ready to further support SBGS' reforms aiming at strengthening its role as a modern and efficient law enforcement agency.”

Under the project, the IOM Mission in Ukraine designed and implemented a new recruitment system for the SBGS to select and hire border guards through an objective, transparent and impartial process. Out of more than 2,550 applicants, over 1,500 were civilians up to 45 years old and another nearly 1,000 were currently or previously serving border guards. The new recruits received intensive training, organized with the support of IOM and the US Department of State.

The project will continue through the coming year and will expand to introduce similar recruitment processes for the border crossing points in the airports of Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro, and Kharkiv, as well as at the Ukraine-Poland border (Yahodyn, Shehyni and Rava-Ruska).

Anastasia, a lawyer by education, is one of the 600 new recruits. She is 26 now, and after graduation she worked mainly in the restaurant business. “I always wanted to apply the knowledge I had from the university, and the work with the State Border Guard Service seemed exactly like what I was looking for,” she said. “For civilians like me it was quite difficult to go through the mandatory physical training, but we managed.”

For more information please contact Varvara Zhluktenko at IOM Ukraine, Tel: +38 044 568 50 15, Email: vzhluktenko@iom.int