Programme dossier
Led by European Union.
SEACOP: Seaport Cooperation Project, and the obligations behind it
Maritime and port-focused cooperation against containerised cocaine, working through joint units in seaports on both sides of the Atlantic.
What it addresses
SEACOP addresses the maritime leg of the cocaine corridors. Its subject is the seaport rather than the border crossing: the point at which a consignment enters or leaves containerised trade, where the volume of cargo makes universal inspection impossible and selection is the only available control.
How it works
The programme works by establishing joint maritime control units and intelligence-sharing structures in participating ports, and by connecting them to each other. The design assumption is that a corridor crosses many jurisdictions and that a unit which cannot exchange information with its counterpart in the previous port is working blind — which is the same constraint described on the enforcement page as the binding one.
Where it applies
SEACOP addresses 2 of the corridors described on the drug routes page: The West African corridor, The Caribbean corridor. The jurisdictions on each are listed there, and every one of them has a record setting out its treaty position, its confirmed national instruments and its current monitoring status.
That combination is what determines whether a programme of this kind can operate in a given place. Capacity-building assumes there is a legal power to build capacity around: an interdiction technique needs a statutory basis, a joint investigation needs a mutual legal assistance route, and a trace needs a record-keeping obligation. Where those are absent the constraint is legislative rather than operational.
Jurisdictions on those corridors — 22
Anguilla · Antigua and Barbuda · Barbados · Brazil · British Virgin Islands · Cabo Verde · Colombia · Dominica · Dominican Republic · Gambia · Ghana · Guinea · Guinea Bissau · Jamaica · Liberia · Nigeria · Saint Lucia · Saint Vincent and the Grenadines · Senegal · Sierra Leone · Trinidad and Tobago · Venezuela
This is the reach of the corridors SEACOP addresses, not a list of participating states: participation is asserted by the inherited index and confirmed by no official source, so it is not published. What can be stated is which jurisdictions sit on the routes in question, and what the record shows about each. Of the 22, 1 carry no national instrument confirmed against a citable register — Liberia — which is precisely the condition in which operational assistance runs ahead of the legal basis for using it.
A joint port unit is multi-agency by construction, and the records on these corridors show how unevenly that is documented: of the 22 jurisdictions reached, 15 name a customs body here, 9 name both a customs and a police body, and 1 names no authority at all. The counts describe published institutional directories rather than the agencies a port actually operates. Where only one side is documented, the record cannot show which body holds the power to open a container and which the power to act on what is inside it.
Treaty basis
In substance the work operationalises the maritime cooperation and controlled-delivery provisions of the 1988 Convention, together with the mutual legal assistance framework of UNTOC. The distinction matters: a programme of this kind creates no legal powers of its own. It builds the capacity of states to use powers they already hold under instruments they have ratified, which is why a jurisdiction that is not party to the relevant instrument gains less from participation than one that is. What each instrument obliges is set out on the conventions reference.
Questions
What was SEACOP?
Seaport Cooperation Project, led by European Union. Maritime and port-focused cooperation against containerised cocaine, working through joint units in seaports on both sides of the Atlantic. The description on this page is drawn from European External Action Service, which documents it.
What problem was SEACOP designed to address?
SEACOP addresses the maritime leg of the cocaine corridors. Its subject is the seaport rather than the border crossing: the point at which a consignment enters or leaves containerised trade, where the volume of cargo makes universal inspection impossible and selection is the only available control.
Which trafficking corridors does SEACOP relate to?
The West African corridor, The Caribbean corridor. Those corridors and the jurisdictions on them are set out on the drug routes page.
What is the treaty basis for this kind of work?
In substance, the maritime cooperation and controlled-delivery provisions of the 1988 Convention, together with the mutual legal assistance framework of UNTOC. A programme of this kind does not create legal powers; it builds the capacity to use powers a state already has under instruments it has ratified, which is why the ratification position on each jurisdiction record matters to what such a programme can achieve there.
Is SEACOP still running?
This index does not assert a current operational state for any programme in it. Funding cycles turn over faster than the pages describing them, and a dossier that claimed a programme was active would be making a claim it could not keep current. European External Action Service is the place to check, and it is linked from the sources at the foot of this page.
Where does SEACOP apply?
To the 22 jurisdictions on the corridors it addresses, each of which has a record here. 1 of them carry no national instrument confirmed against an official register, which is where capacity-building meets a documentation gap: a joint unit can be established in a jurisdiction whose statute this dataset cannot cite. Participant lists are not published here — the inherited archive asserts them and no official source confirms them, so the reach given is the corridor reach.
Sources
- European External Action Service — Seaport Cooperation Project . Checked 2026-07-30.