Speaker
Description
The Capacity Building Programme aims at integrating States Signatories to fully participate in and contribute to the implementation of the CTBTO monitoring and verification system. The CTBTO using its own funding as well as EU voluntary contributions (through EU Council Decisions III, IV and V) aimed at facilitating and strengthening States Signatories' participation in the CTBT verification regime through enhanced access to IMS data and IDC products. These data and products may also be used for civil and scientific applications. The CTBTO has provided support in form of training and workshops for NDC technical staff, PTS experts-in-the-field visits at NDCs, provision of a software package called NDC-in-a-box and donation of NDC basic equipment. The targeted regions so far were, Africa, MESA, EE and SEAPFE. It has been shown that over the past years between 2008 - 2014 there has been a 7-fold increase in data access in Africa and LAC, a four-fold increase in both EE and SEAPFE. There is a direct correlation between the start of the programme in individual countries with their increase in data access activities. There are still challenges to be overcome at many NDCs. Follow-on capacity building activities are designed to address those challenges.
