Officers must clear legitimate travellers swiftly while taking measures to detect potential victims of trafficking and other vulnerable individuals. This process still largely depends on manual interviews and personal instinct, often leading to slows queues, strained resources, and inconsistent outcomes.  

Considering the evolving regional migration patterns and the growing need to strengthen protection sensitive arrival systems, the Screening & Referral Toolkit (the Toolkit) was established in 2018 in response to commitments made at the 2018 Bali Process Ministerial Conference and further reinforced by the 2023 Adelaide Strategy for Cooperation. The Toolkit is a mobile application designed to support faster, more consistent screening and referral practices. It was co-developed by the Regional Support Office of the Bali Process (RSO) and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in consultation with a Roster of National Experts, comprising 12 government officials from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.  

Leading up to a two-country pilot of the Toolkit, the RSO recently convened a hybrid Technical Consultation on the Screening and Referral Toolkit Pilot. The technical consultation garnered expert feedback on the pilot, which aims to evaluate the Toolkit’s real-world effectiveness at two international airports in Bali Process Member States to ensure it is appropriately adapted, deployed, and applied in real-world operational settings. The pilot also aims to build a cadre of trainers who can effectively utilise the app at border control points. 

Participants included 27 technical experts from 12 Bali Process Member States, Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Norway, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Timor Leste, representing immigration authorities, law enforcement, ministries of foreign affairs, and embassy staff.

Participants contributed detailed feedback on how the Toolkit’s functionality could be enhanced to better align with national standard operating procedures and workflows. Discussions focused on the app’s potential to improve relevant referral pathways, reduce duplication across agencies, and equip officers with actionable information to make informed, timely decisions at border control points. Suggestions also highlighted the need for collaboration between relevant authorities such as immigration, customs, law enforcement and victim-protection agencies to enable coordinated use of the Toolkit. Experts also underlined the need to share access to relevant information to avoid duplicative interviews and support clear referral pathways for vulnerable travellers, tailored standard operating procedures to enhance the Toolkit’s usability, and continued training for frontline officers to effectively utilise the app. 

The meeting follows on from an independent review of the Toolkit by the Australian Institute of Criminology conducted in 2024, which provided recommendations for refinement and highlighted the Toolkit’s readiness to be piloted in the field. 

An Expression of Interest process will be launched in late July 2025 to select pilot countries for implementation of the Toolkit. The pilot seeks to validate the Toolkit’s value under live operating conditions, testing usability in two international airports.  

The RSO will continue to support enhanced border and migration management across Bali Process Member States through its 2024-2026 Work Plan, particularly to strengthen operational responses at border points through the piloting of the Screening and Referral Toolkit and the delivery of targeted training programs. These efforts are captured through RSO Initiative 5: Identification and support for migrants who may be in a vulnerable situation. 

For more information regarding the Screening and Referral Toolkit Pilot, please reach out to Eun Jung Yi, RSO Programme Manager – Border Migration and Management at Eunjung.yi@rso.baliprocess.net or Andi Yurdi, RSO Programme Officer – Border and Migration Management at andi.yurdi@rso.baliprocess.net.