Vienna – 16 May 2022. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) organised in Vienna the 31st session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), from 16 to 20 May 2022. On this occasion, the Assembly was represented by Hon. Rita Theodorou Superman, member of the Cyprus delegation to PAM.
The event aimed at fostering engagement among practitioners, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders, and tackling a number of key issues in more than 80 registered side events, in order to prevent and combat the different forms of crime, promoting justice, and protecting victims.
Hon. Superman addressed the General Debate, which counted the interventions of more than hundred participants from the UN Member States, Intergovernmental Organizations, and NGOs.
In her speech, she stated that this year, the implementation of the revision mechanism of the UN Convention against transnational organized crime (Palermo Convention) and its Protocols by UNODC gives the opportunity to determine, at the legislative level, the validity of the current provisions deriving from the application of the Convention and its Protocols, taking into account the modern IT and digital technologies used by global criminal networks to carry out their malicious activities.
“I, myself, contributed to the fight against organized crime in my position as Head of the Anti–Trafficking Unit of the Cyprus Police, from 2005 until 2020”, she added, “After the COVID-19 pandemic […] the profile of the victims has been changed and many more groups of people begin to be deemed as vulnerable to human trafficking. Migration has become a great challenge for the States as it provides a platform for traffickers to recruit vulnerable people.”
During the General Debate, representatives of the UN Member States provided insights on the status of their domestic legislations to prevent and contrast international criminal networks.
PAM reiterated its commitment to closely work with UNODC in the fight against transnational organized crime. In this regard, on 20 and 21 June 2022, PAM will organise, in Naples, the high-level parliamentary conference “The Palermo Convention: the future of the fight against transnational organised crime”, in partnership with UNODC and the Vittorio Occorsio Foundation. The conference represents the parliamentary contribution to the review process of the Palermo Convention, and the results achieved in the different sessions will be shared with the UNODC Conference of State Parties, in October 2022.