DOHA: Promises on paper, including global instruments and UN Security Council resolutions, are “not enough” to combat corruption, terrorism and other cross-border criminal activities, delegates heard as they discussed international cooperation to combat transnational organised crime, at the 13th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice here.
Prompt and effective implementation of those instruments and a spirit of collaboration were needed to achieve results, the speakers said. Further, the pace of the international community’s response must be “stepped up” to match the speed with which crime was spreading, Iraq’s representative said.
While commending the roles of the United Nations and its Office on Drugs and Crime in fostering partnerships, he regretted saying that instruments and resolutions were “not enough” and that their slow implementation was an obstacle to justice.
Agreeing, Romania’s representative said ratification of or adherence to an international instrument was insufficient if it was not followed by concrete measures.
“The functionality of a convention is measured not by the number of ratifications, but by the number of cases when it is actually used and, moreover, the number of cases when such operations are shown to be successful,” she said, adding that even though every state had the responsibility to promote various instruments, accountability was needed at national, regional and global levels.
In a similar vein, some speakers discouraged the creation of new crime-fighting instruments, with Germany’s speaker saying that drafting new instruments could actually hinder practical work.
Asserting that the multiplicity of treaties often resulted in legal confusion, he said his country was already dealing with a “patchwork” of mutually overlapping legal instruments. The lengthy time required to draft a convention, he said, would be better spent on bolstering partnerships.
The other issues discussed on the fifth day of the Congress included strengthening crime prevention and criminal justice responses to evolving forms of crime such as cybercrime and trafficking in cultural property.
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