FEATURED ARTICLE
BASIC GUIDE TO THE UNITED NATIONS CRIME PROGRAMME
Matti Joutsen*

1. The development of the UN Crime Programme
1.1. The establishment of the UN Crime Programme 	
1.2. The early years of the UN Crime Programme (the 1950s to the 1980s) 	
1.3. From the UN Crime Committee to the UN Crime Commission
1.4. The negotiation of the UN Crime Conventions
1.5. The impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
2. The structural elements of the UN Crime Programme
2.1. The overall structure
2.2. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
2.3. The UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice2.4. The UN Crime Congresses on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice2.5. The Conferences of the States Parties to the UN Crime Conventions
2.6. The UN Crime Programme Network of Institutes (the PNIs)

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3. Who’s who in the UN Crime Programme

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3.1. The member states 	
3.2. UN specialized agencies and the PNIs
3.3. Intergovernmental organizations
3.4. Nongovernmental organizations
3.5. Individual experts

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4. The products of the UN Crime Programme

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4.1. The UN Crime Programme standards and norms
4.2. Resolutions
4.3. UN Secretariat documentation and UN Crime Programme meeting reports
4.4. The UN Crime Conventions
4.5. UN Crime Programme technical assistance

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5. International sensitivities in the UN Crime Programme

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6. Ten rules for success in the UN Crime Programme

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7. Legends in the UN Crime Programme40* Former Director, The European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations, Finland.
Further material on the UN Crime Programme is available on the HEUNI website: http://heuni.education/un_crime_
programme_course

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1. The development of the UN Crime Programme1
1.1. The establishment of the UN Crime Programme
The United Nations Programme on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (generally referred to as the
UN Crime Programme) consists of the work carried out under the coordination of the United Nations
Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (the UN Crime Commission) in order to provide
practical assistance to member states in preventing crime, and in improving the response to national andtransnational crime, for example through data collection, the sharing of information and experience, andtraining.2 (Although the prevention and response to the illegal cultivation, production, trafficking in and useof narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances is closely related to crime prevention and the response tocrime, it is dealt with by a separate UN Commission, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs.)
The foundation for the UN Crime Programme rests primarily on two predecessors: (1) the early work ofinternational scientific and professional organizations, and (2) the work of the League of Nations.
At the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, discussions on crime and criminal policy became
international. Practitioners and policymakers from different countries started to exchange their experiences
and theories, and organize international conferences. The first International Congress on the Prevention and
Repression of Crime, held in London in 1872, led to the establishment of the International Penal and
Penitentiary Commission (IPPC), which undertook to organize similar international congresses every five
years.
When the League of Nations was established in the aftermath of the First World War, it organizeddiscussions among experts on crime-related issues and produced a few reports on such subjects as juvenile
delinquency and child welfare, trafficking in women and children, counterfeiting, and correctional treatment.
In general, however, it did not have a very high profile in international discussions on crime and justice.3
At the time that the United Nations was established, shortly after the end of the Second World War, thegeneral view seemed to be that, in respect of crime and criminal justice, it should continue where the Leagueof Nations had left off. The United Nations started out with two steps, identification of what crime and justiceissues it would deal with, and assumption of the functions of the IPPC.4
In 1950, the General Assembly decided that the mandate of what became the UN Crime Programme
would cover the following: juvenile delinquency; assessment of adult offenders before sentencing; probation;fines, and open penitentiary institutions; habitual offenders; the role of medical, psychological and social
sciences in dealing with delinquency and crime; the training of correctional staff; and criminal statistics, witha view to the development of a report on the state of crime. Markedly absent from the list of issues to becovered were organized crime and transnational crime (although trafficking in women and children did meritreference in other UN documents).5

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Sections 1.1 - 1.5 are based on Matti Joutsen, Four Transitions in the United Nations Crime Programme, available at:https://www.unodc.org/documents/commissions/CCPCJ/CCPCJ_Sessions/CCPCJ_26/E_CN15_2017_CRP4_e_V1703636.pdf
2
GA Resolution 46/152 on the creation of an effective United Nations crime prevention and criminal justice programme,
preambular paragraph 8 and operational paragraph 5.
3
Manuel Lopez-Rey, Guide to United Nations Criminal Policy, Gower 1985, pp. 8, 93‒95; and Slawomir Redo 2012, Blue
Criminology: The power of United Nations ideas to counter crime globally - A monographic study, Helsinki: HEUNI Reportseries no. 72, p. 68.
4This was achieved through General Assembly Resolution 415 (V).
5International Review of Criminal Policy, United Nations Department of Social Affairs 1952, Vol. 1, p. 12.
 	When the draft mandate of the UN Crime Programme was debated at the General Assembly in 1950, the Soviet Unionand four of its allies argued for restricting the mandate to international and transnational crimes such as genocide, slavery,
narcotic drugs, trafficking in women and children, and trafficking in obscene publications. In their view, the issues identified
in the draft were essentially internal matters, and according to the UN Charter, the UN has no right to become involved indomestic issues. Lopez-Rey 1985 p. 1; Redo 2012, p. 110, and Roger Clark (1994), The United Nations Crime Prevention andCriminal Justice Program. Formulation of Standards and Efforts at Their Implementation, University of Pennsylvania Press, p.
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In taking over the functions of the IPPC, in turn, the UN received the following from the IPPF:- two IPPF staff members who formed the nucleus for the UN Secretariat body dealing with crime andjustice issues;6- a pool of experts who had been active in the IPPF, from among whom an ad hoc Advisory Committee
was formed to assist the Secretariat; and- the model for the future United Nations Crime Congresses.7
1.2. The early years of the UN Crime Programme (the 1950s to the 1980s).
The main policy-making body in the UN on economic and social matters is the Economic and Social
Council (ECOSOC). It has a rather large mandate, and its members cannot be expected to have sufficient
substantive knowledge of crime prevention and criminal justice issues to formulate policy.  In 1949, ECOSOC
established an ad hoc committee of seven experts to advise it on such issues, with the individual expertschanging in part from one meeting to the next. In 1965, the ad hoc Committee became a permanent body,the United Nations Committee on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (the UN Crime
Committee, to be replaced in 1991 by the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal
Justice).
The members of the UN Crime Committee were appointed in their personal capacity; they did not
represent their government or their organization. They were generally senior officials working in the criminal
justice system of their respective country, or (in a few cases) academics. Since there was relatively little
turnover among them, they tended to be familiar not only with criminal justice in general, but also with theworking of the United Nations Crime Programme.8
During the first decades of UN work on crime prevention and criminal justice, the focus was on thecollection and exchange of information, research, and the development of international standards and norms(“soft law”).9 Among the achievements were the adoption of the first ever UN standard and norm, theStandard Minimum Rules on the Treatment of Offenders, at the First United Nations Crime Congress in
1955.10
Membership in the UN began to expand in particular during the 1960s, and an increasing number ofexperts and practitioners from developing countries joined in the discussions.  One result was that the scopeof discussion widened from the traditional (Western) academic and professional focus on juvenile delinquency
and corrections, to other types of crimes and criminal justice concerns. Already the Second UN Crime
Congress, in 1960, had as one of its main topics the prevention of crime that results from social change andeconomic development in less developed countries.
When representatives of developing countries began to join in the UN discussions, in general theyrecognized the value of work on soft law. However, they repeatedly pointed out that work is needed also on
implementing these decisions. In many of their countries, legislation and policies were often outdated, thestructure of the criminal justice system was inadequate, many practitioners lacked training, and above all
the financial resources for implementation were often lacking. In response, the UN Secretariat became more
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According to subparagraph (h) of GA resolution 415 (v), two IPPC “professional officers” were detached to the Secretariat,
and one Secretariat staff member “specialized in the field of the prevention of crime and the treatment of offenders” wasassigned to work with them.
7
Paragraph (d) of General Assembly resolution 415 (v) stated that “The United Nations shall convene every five years aninternational congress similar to those previously organized by the IPPC (International Penal and Penitentiary Commission).
Resolutions adopted at such international Congresses shall be communicated to the Secretary-General and, if necessary, tothe policy-making bodies.”
8
Lopez-Rey 1985, pp. 14 – 20, and William Clifford, Echoes and Hopes. The United Nations Committee on Crime Prevention
and Control, Canberra 1979 (passim) provide background on the Committee.
9
In international law, “soft law” refers to quasi-legal instruments such as resolutions, guidelines and declarations, which
embody political aspirations, but are not legally binding. “Hard law,” in turn, refers for example to international conventions
which are binding on the states parties.
10
The Standard Minimum Rules had been originally drafted within the framework of the IPPC.

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involved in technical assistance activities, assisted by the growing network of UN-affiliated institutes.11
1.3. From the UN Crime Committee to the UN Crime Commission
As of the beginning of the 1970s, transnational and organized crime began to appear on the UN Crime
Programme agenda. The first such issues included consumer fraud, corruption, trafficking in cultural property,
and terrorism. Towards the end of the 1980s, some countries began to argue that the growth of transnationaland organized crime, including terrorism, trafficking in persons, and money laundering, required a moreaction-oriented UN Crime Programme, one that was not being provided by the expert-driven Committee,
which was devoting most of its time to the drafting and adoption of “soft law” resolutions.
This criticism became stronger in the wake of the 1990 UN Crime Congress, held in Havana, which
adopted not only twelve new standards and norms, but also thirty-three other resolutions, for a grand totalof forty-five resolutions. For some participants, this torrent of paper was emblematic of growing problems in
the UN Crime Programme. Some governmental representatives noted with concern that many of the draft
standards and norms had been prepared without sufficient government input. Others argued that soft law
instruments were an ineffective response to the growing problems of crime and criminal justice, and that theCongress should be looking more for action than for words on paper. Many participants pointed out that overhalf – twenty-four – of the draft resolutions had not been submitted until at the Congress itself, and therefore
there was insufficient time to study these drafts.12
At the time of the 1990 UN Crime Congress, discussions were in fact already underway on restructuring
the UN Crime Programme. This was accomplished with the adoption of General Assembly resolution
46/152 of 18 December 1991. The most notable and ultimately far-reaching change was that the expertdriven UN Crime Committee was replaced by a government-driven United Nations Commission on Crime
Prevention and Criminal Justice (the UN Crime Commission).13
The new UN Crime Commission consists of forty member states elected by ECOSOC for a term of three
years: twelve from the African region, nine from the Asian region, eight from the Latin American and
Caribbean region, four from the Eastern European region, and seven from the “Western Europe and otherstates” regional group.
While the UN Crime Committee had been convened (during the last years of its existence) for a leisurely
two weeks every second year, the UN Crime Commission began by holding annual sessions of one week, andin time added annual “reconvened” sessions as well as “intersessional” meetings.14
1.4. The negotiation of the UN Crime Conventions
The experts on the UN Crime Committee had served in their personal capacity. Nonetheless, as experts
in crime prevention and criminal justice, they represented a broad range of backgrounds and approaches,and collectively tended to see crime as a social issue.
At the time the UN Crime Commission was established, in comparison, many national policy-makers
tended to see crime (and in particular transnational organized crime and terrorism) as a national security
issue. A consequence of the shift from an expert-driven to a government-driven UN Crime Programme has
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The capacity of the Secretariat to provide technical assistance, however, was severely hampered by the lack of financial
and personnel resources. During these early decades, the Secretariat unit responsible for the UN Crime Programme had
fewer than a dozen professional staff members.
12
See, in particular, Clark 1994, pp. 126-132.
13
A detailed presentation of the work of the UN Crime Commission is provided in Christopher Ram (2012), Meeting thechallenge of crime in the global village: An assessment of the role and future of the United Nations Commission on Crime
Prevention and Criminal Justice, Helsinki: HEUNI Report series no. 73.
14
Reconvened meetings are formally continuations of the annual meetings. Intersessional meetings are primarily for the
preparation of the next session, and for updates on progress achieved.

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been an increased focus on strengthening the ability of the state to control crime: expanding the scope of
criminalization, strengthening police powers, and increasing the efficiency of the operation of the criminal
justice system. There was a resulting decrease in the amount of attention devoted for example to prevention,
juvenile delinquency, restorative justice and victim issues – although, to be clear, also these remained on theagenda.
Above all, there was an increased focus on improving the efficacy of international cooperation in the
response to crime. This focus was strengthened by a variety of developments.
One development was the strong perception by many states that crime was increasingly becoming more
serious, more organized and more transnational.
A second, and related, development was the growing conviction that the response to transnational crime
and terrorism could not be effective without international cooperation: cooperation among law enforcement
agencies, judicial cooperation, and cooperation in the form of technical assistance.
A third development was that during the years that the UN Crime Committee was producing “soft law,”
the UN drug programme (the Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the International Narcotics Control Board)
had continued the work on “hard law” begun under the League of Nations. In 1988, the United Nations
adopted the Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. This 1988
Drug Convention consolidated and brought international hard law up to date in respect of the definition of
drug-related crime. It also included, for the first time in a multilateral treaty, provisions on international law
enforcement cooperation, mutual legal assistance and extradition.
The 1988 Drug Convention became a template for those who wanted a more vigorous and effective UN
Crime Programme. Several states began to advocate for one or more international conventions dealing withdifferent aspects of crime and criminal justice.
Following a ministerial conference held in Naples in 1994, the General Assembly set up an ad hoc
Committee to elaborate a convention on transnational organized crime. The result, the United Nations
Convention on Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), with separate protocols on trafficking in persons,the smuggling of migrants, and trafficking in firearms, was opened for signature in 2000. This was soon
followed by the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), which was opened for signature in 2003.
Each of the UN Crime Conventions established a Conference of the States Parties, which oversees
implementation and discusses issues related to the substance of the respective convention. However, also the
UN Crime Commission and the UN Crime Congresses began to devote more time to transnational andorganized crime issues.
A fourth change in the UN Crime Programme has been in who participates in the discussions in Vienna.
As already noted, during the early years of the UN Crime Programme, through to the 1980s, the participants
at meetings tended to be individual experts knowledgeable in crime prevention and criminal justice. The UN
Crime Committee met every other year for eight days, allowing time for interaction both in and outside of
the meeting rooms. From 1955 to 1990, the UN Crime Congresses lasted for two weeks, and were a mix ofdebate, negotiations and social events. The tradition arose of seeking consensus on all resolutions anddecisions (the “spirit of Vienna”). Calling for a vote on any issue was a measure used only in very raresituations.15
Since the 1990s, the profile of many of the participants has changed. Largely because of the entry into
force of the two UN Crime Conventions, the number of UN Crime Programme meetings held in Vienna has
increased considerably. In addition to the biannual sessions of the two Conferences of the States Parties,
these two bodies have set up several subsidiary working groups, which generally meet on an annual basis,
15

Exceptions did occur. Several resolutions at the Sixth UN Crime Congress in 1980 (in Caracas), and one resolution at theEighth UN Crime Congress in 1990 (in Havana) were adopted following a vote. From 1990 to 2021, there have been no votes
at any of the UN Crime Congresses or at any of the sessions of the UN Crime Commission. At the 2021 session of the UN
Crime Commission, a vote was held on a procedural matter, the election of a member of the Bureau of the session.

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for a period ranging from two to five days. The UN Crime Commission, in turn, meets for its regular annual
session, but also other meetings throughout the year. In addition, various intergovernmental working groups
hold meetings. The result is that the UN Crime Programme meeting calendar is demanding, with on the
average one or more meeting every month. It is logistically and financially difficult for member states to send
experts “from the capitals” to attend short meetings so often. As a result, the participants tend to be
diplomats based in Vienna.
The four developments described above – a more globally representative UN Crime Programme, theincreased influence that governments have on the work carried out in Vienna, the growing importance of
hard law UN crime conventions, and the shift in the composition of participants – have had several
consequences. One has been the politicization of several issues in the discussions. A second has been theincreased use of extrabudgetary funding, and increasingly severe financial problems. A third consequence
has already been mentioned: less discussion on general crime prevention and criminal justice, and a greater
focus on transnational and organized crime.
Politicization of issues. Within the UN Crime Programme, diplomats, practitioners and academics all havean important role to play. Broadly speaking, academics can analyse developments in crime and the responseto crime, practitioners can provide evidence on what works (and what doesn’t), while diplomats can formulate
this on the international level into policy pronouncements, and ensure that the decision is in line with what
is being done elsewhere in the United Nations.
The change in the main participants in the discussions in Vienna, from experts in criminal policy todiplomats, has inadvertently meant that what were once discussions of substantive policy have often become
negotiations over the wording of draft resolutions. The earlier discussions within the framework of the UN
Crime Programme on standards and norms had been consensus-oriented, and in general had not excitedpoliticized passions. This could largely be attributed to the fact that the soft law resolutions were not binding,and therefore had no direct policy implications for individual states. Once the discussion shifted to transnationalorganized crime and to the two hard law UN Crime Conventions, the situation changed. Certain aspects oftransnational crime and of the response to transnational crime raise political sensitivities. Examples include
the repatriation of the proceeds of crime, trafficking in cultural property, and cybercrime. The politicization
has also extended beyond substantive crime issues and into questions of process, most significantly in theform of a continuing and at time acrimonious debate over the role of civil society in the local, national andinternational response to crime.
Financial constraints. During the first half century of the existence of the UN Crime Programme (roughly
to the 1990s), most of the (extremely limited) activities of the Programme were financed through the regular
UN budget. Today, the situation is quite the reverse: over 90 % of the UN Crime Programme budget comesfrom extrabudgetary sources. The two primary factors that have led to this are the rapid expansion of UN
Crime Programme activities (most clearly visible in costs associated with the review of implementation of
the UN Convention on Corruption), and a series of world-wide economic crises, which have led the major
donor countries to reconsider their commitments.
The Secretariat has made commendable efforts to secure extrabudgetary funding, and has succeeded insignificantly expanding its technical assistance activities around the world. However, this shift towards ahigh dependence on extrabudgetary funding has also had negative consequences. These consequences
include the constant need to spend considerable time on identifying sources of funding, uncertainty over thesustainability of various projects, competition within the UNODC over resources, and concerns that much of
the work that is carried out will remain tied to the interests of the donors.
As long as only 10 % of its activities is funded through the regular UN budget, the UN Crime Programmeleads a tenuous existence. It is unlikely that these financial constraints will ease anytime soon. In addition,
the UNODC is constantly being asked by member states to take on even more tasks.
Focus on organized and transnational crime, efficiency and punitive measures. The adoption of the two UN
crime conventions has provided welcome tools for the international community to respond to serious threats.
The global conventions have considerably expanded the geographical scope of cooperation. They provide
common definitions of certain key offences; they require (or, in some cases, at least encourage) states parties
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to criminalize these acts; and they have standardized and contributed to the development of procedural
forms of cooperation. At the same time, however, the increased attention given to the improvement ofinternational law enforcement and judicial cooperation appears to have resulted in correspondingly lessattention being paid to prevention, to community-based and restorative measures, and to strengthening theposition of the victim of crime.
1.5. The impact of the Sustainable Development Goals
In September 2015, the United Nations Summit adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The 2030 Agenda emphasizes the links between the different goals, among them (as part of Goal 16) crime
prevention and criminal justice. The 2030 Agenda could contribute to a further transition in the UN Crime
Programme, towards a truly global UN Crime Programme that pays increasing attention to how crime
prevention and criminal justice can contribute to sustainable development around the world, in bothdeveloping and developed countries. Such a UN Crime Programme would be framed by the links between
Goal 16 and other Goals, such as gender equality, the sustainability of communities, and poverty reduction.
It would continue to deal with pressing questions related to transnational and organized crime, but would
also deal with the prevention of and response to “ordinary” crime. It would continue to identify best practices
in international law enforcement and judicial cooperation, but would also seek to identify best practices inthe strengthening of access to justice, restorative justice, victim support and community-based sanctions.
The ground work for this has already been laid. The extensive body of UN standards and norms provides
a framework for the national and international response to crime, and in so doing serves to strengthen
respect for human rights and the rule of law in the criminal justice system.
There are encouraging signs that this transition is already underway. One sign is that there has been aslight resurgence in the number of “experts from the capitals” attending UN Crime Programme meetings,
working alongside the diplomats on such practical issues as prosecutorial and judicial cooperation, or the
response to cybercrime. Another sign is the growing capacity of the UNODC (albeit subject to the availabilityof extrabudgetary funding) to provide technical assistance to member states. A third sign is the expanding
work of the UN Programme Network of Institutes in providing member states with technical assistance inresearch, training and policy development in crime prevention and criminal justice.
The global Covid-19 pandemic, in turn, alongside of all the suffering it has caused, may have indirectly
contributed to growing involvement of “experts from the capitals” in the UN Crime Programme. Governments
around the world have locked down the population and restricted domestic and international travel. As aresult, in-person meetings (such as those that have been held in Vienna) have been replaced at least for thetime being by online and “hybrid” meetings, which opens up the possibility that the national experts could
attend UN Crime Programme meetings online.
The changes brought about by the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs can build on the strengthsof the three previous transitions.  The intellectual debate from the early years can be revitalized in order tobring in research and best practices from around the world, channelled for example through the UNODC
and the Programme Network of Institutes so that it is reflected in the discussions at the UN Crime
Commission, the UN Crime Congresses and other meetings. The government-driven discussions can in thisway benefit from the input of experts, who can identify what best practices can be adapted to the different
circumstances around the world so that these meet not only the general needs of member states, but also
the ground-level needs of practitioners and local communities, of victims and of offenders.
The soft law and the hard law elements of the UN Crime Programme reinforce one another in strengthening
local, national and international crime prevention and criminal justice, and in this way contribute to theongoing work on the review of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

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2. The structural elements of the UN Crime Programme
2.1. The overall structure
The primary responsibility within the UN system for issues related to crime prevention and criminal
justice lies with the Economic and Social Council. Some politically sensitive crime issues, such as war
crimes, genocide and terrorism, are now and then debated directly in the General Assembly of the UN. In
addition, the General Assembly at times sets up special bodies to deal with specific issues, such as thedrafting of new international agreements.
Within the UN Secretariat, issues relating to crime prevention and criminal justice are dealt with by the
UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), although related issues are also considered by, for example, theOffice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
2.2. The UNODC and its field and regional offices16
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime acts as the Secretariat to the UN Crime Commission, theUN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, and to the Conferences of the States Parties to the two UN Crime
Conventions and the three Drug Control Conventions.17
For most of its existence, the Secretariat unit responsible for the UN Crime Programme remained small,with fewer than a dozen professional staff members, and somewhat more secretarial staff members. Overthe past twenty years, largely as a consequence of the adoption of the two UN Crime Conventions, thenumber of professional staff members dealing with substantive crime issues in the UNODC has increased toabout 350, serving both at the UNODC headquarters in Vienna, and at regional and field offices around theworld.18
UNODC regional offices have been established in Bangkok (Southeast Asia and the Pacific), Cairo (Middle
East and North Africa), Dakar (West and Central Africa), New Delhi (South Asia), Nairobi (East Africa),
Panama City (Central America and the Caribbean), Pretoria (South Africa) and Tashkent (Central Asia). In
addition, UNODC has seven national offices and 94 programme offices.19
2.3. The UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice20
The United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (the UN Crime Commission)functions as the governing body of the UNODC. The UN Crime Commission coordinates with other United
Nations bodies that have specific mandates in the areas of crime prevention and criminal justice, and is also
the preparatory body to the United Nations Crime Congress. The UN Crime Commission thus acts as theprincipal policy-making body of the United Nations in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice.
The UN Crime Commission consists of forty member states elected by ECOSOC for a term of three
16

For further information, see unodc.org
The three Drug Control Conventions are the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, as amended by the 1972
Protocol; the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971; and the United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in
Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988.
18
This, however, is only an estimate. The UNODC currently has a total of 2,400 professional and secretarial staff members
at the headquarters in Vienna, and at field and regional offices around the world. It is difficult to assess precisely how many
staff members deal with drug control issues and how many with crime prevention and criminal justice issues, since forexample the UN border control and container control programmes serve both areas.
19
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/field-offices.html#:~:text=UNODC%20operates%20in%20more%20than,with%20
2%2C400%20UNODC%20personnel%20globally20
For further information, including the documentation and reports from the sessions of the UN Crime Commission, see
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/commissions/CCPCJ/index.html
 	  Christopher Ram 2012 has laid out several suggestions for how the work of the Commission (and, indirectly, of the UN
Crime Programme itself) can be strengthened. See esp. pp. 98 ff.
17

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years. The sessions of the UN Crime Commission are attended also by a very large number of observerstates as well as by other categories of participants: representatives of UN specialized agencies, the UN
Crime Programme Network of Institutes (PNIs), intergovernmental organizations and non-governmentalorganizations.21
The UN Crime Commission holds annual five-day sessions (generally during May). Since 2009, “reconvened”
sessions of two or three days have been held in early December. In addition, “intersessional” meetings havebeen held as necessary.
Over the years, the formal agenda of each annual session has become relatively standard. Following the
opening of the session, there will be a general debate (usually lasting the first day), followed by what is called
a “thematic debate” related to the special theme selected for that respective session of the UN Crime
Commission (usually lasting the second day). Ether on the afternoon of the first day or on Tuesday, the UN
Programme Network of Institutes (PNIs) together with the UNODC organize a workshop related to thistheme.
Towards the middle of the week, the UN Crime Commission takes up strategic management, budgetary
and administrative questions, followed by “integration and coordination of efforts by the UNODC and bymember states in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice.” This includes ratification andimplementation of the two UN Crime Conventions and of international instruments related to terrorism, as
well as for example activities of the PNIs, NGOs and other bodies.
On Thursday, according to this somewhat standardized agenda, the UN Crime Commission discusses theuse and application of UN standards and norms in crime prevention and criminal justice; world crime trends
and emerging issues and responses; as well as follow-up to the previous UN Crime Congress, and preparations
for the following UN Crime Congress.
On the last day, Friday, the UN Crime Commission directs its attention for example to implementation of
the Sustainable Developments Goals. The afternoon is reserved for the draft agenda of the next session of
the UN Crime Commission, the adoption of resolutions, and the adoption of the report.
The discussion on each of the agenda items follows a relatively standard procedure. Once the Secretariat
representative has introduced the agenda item (or the members of a panel or roundtable have given theirstatements), the chairperson opens the floor for discussion. Regional groups have the option of speaking first,
followed by representatives of member states. If Ministers or other dignitaries are in attendance, they will
generally be invited to speak first.
The Secretariat keeps the list of speakers, which the chairperson consults in giving speakers the floor.
Persons who wish to speak should contact a conference room officer and ask to be placed on the list of
speakers, on the basis of “first come, first served.” The speaker can also ask to be allotted a certain time (suchas the first to speak after lunch, or the first to speak after another speaker), as long as this does not endanger
the “first come, first served” approach, or speakers whose priority would be affected inform the conference
room officer that they agree to this.
The conference room officer will usually ask if the statement is in writing, so that this can be distributed
to the interpreters. If so, the written statements should preferably be given to the Secretariat at least anhour in advance, so that the Secretariat has time to deliver it to the interpreters' booths, and the interpreters,in turn, have time to note the availability of the text, and use it for the interpretation. (The UN interpreters
are very competent, and can adjust if the speaker makes changes to the text during delivery.)
Because of the need for interpretation, oral statements should be given at a relatively leisurely pace: notponderously slow, but definitely not in a rush. Most interpreters prefer simple, straightforward sentencesthat follow the normal rhythm of conversation. All too often, written statements can include long andconvoluted sentence structures which can be difficult to follow, even if the interpreter has a written text in
21

Representatives of specialized agencies, PNIs, IGOs and NGOs may take the floor only if no state wishes to do so. In
practice, this means that their contribution to the debate has become indirect and rather marginal.

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front of him or her.
The chairperson may limit the length of oral statements. However, even if no limit has been placed,
speakers should avoid trying the patience of the audience, who have to sit through six hours of meetings
every day, involving a study stream of oral statements. PowerPoint presentations and even videos may help
in getting a point across, but if these are given, the speaker should be mindful that the UN works with six
official languages, and thus perhaps the majority of the participants will depend on the interpretation.
Under the rules of procedure, the chairperson has the power to call a speaker to order if his or her
remarks are not relevant to the subject under discussion. This is extremely rare.
The formal discussion on all of the agenda items at sessions of the UN Crime Commission, with the
exception of the PNI Workshop, takes place in the plenary. Much of the work of the UN Crime Commission,
however, takes place elsewhere, in the informal negotiations (known as “informals”) and in the Committeeof the Whole. It is here that most of the negotiation over the draft resolutions takes place (see section 4.2.).
In addition, various member states, PNIs, intergovernmental organizations and nongovernmentalorganizations organized so-called side events (similar to the ancillary meetings organized at UN Crime
Congresses), on a large variety of issues.
The participants at UN Crime Commission sessions will have before them extensive documentation
produced by the UNODC and generally available in advance at the unodc.org website. As with the formal
agenda, many of these documents follow the same standardized format, and provide background for the
discussion of the respective items on the agenda.
The final stage of work at UN meetings involves the adoption of the report. The Secretariat generally
assists the rapporteur in this process, and the draft text is usually very carefully constructed to reflect whatshould be an impartial summary of the discussions.
Drafting UN reports can be called an art in its own right. UN meetings often deal with sensitive points,
and the rapporteur (assisted by the Secretariat) seeks to present these in a way that would be acceptable tothe different sides on the issues. With some exceptions (such as heads of state or other distinguishedspeakers) it is not customary for speakers to be identified in the report, even by member state. The reference
will be simply to “one speaker noted” or “several speakers suggested that ...”
Many participants, who may be exhausted by the lengthy negotiations, may assume that the adoption of
the report will be a formality. However, on particularly sensitive issues, some representatives may try to
expand the presentation of the arguments that their side had made, thus correspondingly diminishing theamount of attention given to opposing points of view. One technique used here is for a representative toargue that his/her country's position, as given earlier, was not correctly reflected in the report, and thensubmit a (lengthy) proposal for amending the report to remedy this. The chairperson usually accepts shortamendments along these lines. Given that this may indeed give a one-sided impression of the discussion,
representatives from the other side on the issues may wish to make corresponding amendments based on
points made in the discussions by other speakers.
2.4. The United Nations Congresses on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice22
The United Nations Congresses on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (generally referred to as the
UN Crime Congresses) are the world’s largest global gatherings on crime and justice. They are also theoldest periodic conferences organized by the United Nations on a specific subject area. The Congresses areorganized every five years by the UNODC together with the host country, in accordance with mandates
given by the General Assembly.
22

The following section is based on Matti Joutsen, The Evolution of the United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention andCriminal Justice, Thailand Institute of Justice 2021, available at: https://knowledge.tijthailand.org/en/publication/detail/theevolution-of-the-united-nations-congress-on-crime-prevention-and-criminal-justice#book/

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UN Crime Congresses are intended for the exchange of views between states, intergovernmentalorganizations, non-governmental organizations and individual experts, the exchange of experiences in
research, law and policy development, and the identification of emerging trends and issues in crime prevention
and criminal justice.23
In the formal sense, the UN Crime Congresses do not set UN policy. The outcome of the Congress, theso-called Congress Declaration, is submitted to the UN Crime Commission. However, the argument has been
made that a Congress convened every five years, and attended by senior policy makers from the large
majority of UN member states, does have a marked influence in setting the framework of the work of the
UN Crime Programme for the next five years.
UN Crime Congresses have a formal part and an extensive informal part. The formal part consists of the
opening and the closing sessions, the “high-level segment” in plenary immediately after the opening (during
which participants of ministerial rank and above are allowed to speak, for perhaps about ten minutes per
speaker), the discussion on the agenda items, and the discussion in the workshops. The informal part consistsof a large number of so-called ancillary meetings, meetings of regional groups, possible informal negotiations
among national delegations, and an exhibition.
A total of fourteen UN Crime Congresses has been held to date. The next UN Crime Congress isscheduled to be held in 2025.
If a participant at the first UN Crime Congress, held in Geneva in 1955, would jump in a time capsule toattend the most recent UN Crime Congress, held in Kyoto in 2021, he or she would find much that is familiar(having overcome his or her astonishment at the fact that, due to the pandemic, most of the participants at
the Kyoto Congress attended online). The participants represent member states, specialized agencies,
intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations. In addition (and this is unusual amongmajor UN Conferences, and is a legacy from the IPPC conferences), a number of individual experts attend.
The participants discuss specific agenda items, and a report is prepared on the proceedings. Much has thus
stayed more or less the same.
However, as indicated in the table below, the format and substance of the UN Crime Congresses have
evolved considerably. Among the more important changes are the following:- the participants come from a larger number of member states, and the number of participants has
increased;- Congress Workshops have been added to the formal proceedings;- the number of ancillary meetings has expanded;- a “high level segment” has been added to the UN Crime Congresses (since 2000); and- instead of adopting separate resolutions on different topics, the more recent UN Crime Congresses(since 2000) have adopted a single consolidated Congress Declaration.
Table 1: Timeline of the evolution of the UN Crime Congresses, 1955 – 2021
UN Crime
Congresschanges in the approach to crime,
as reflected in the Congresses

First
Geneva,1955

social defence theory; gradualshift from individual-oriented tosociety-oriented theories of crime

SecondLondon,1960

expansion of criminologicalconcepts beyond a purely
Western perspective

changes in the Congresses
50 national delegations, 500
participants
first UN standard and norm
adoptednumber of participants reaches
1,000
Russian added as official language

notable UN
developments

1962: UNAFEI(first PNI)
established23

GA resolution A/RES/46/152, para 29. Further refinements are provided in ECOSOC resolution 1992/24 and GA resolution
A/Res/56/119 (2002).

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RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 114

UN Crime
Congresschanges in the approach to crime,
as reflected in the Congresses

Third
Stockholm,
1965

new: attention to prevention andinformal social control
new: attention to the impact ofsocial change on crime

FourthKyoto,
1970

first references to terrorism
first references to organized
crime

Fifth
Geneva,1975

concept of transnational(organized) crime introduced
new: attention to economic costsof crime
new: human rights issues raised
new: crime and development
considered
new: abuse of power considered
new: prison overcrowding
considered

Sixth
Caracas,1980

SeventhMilan, 1985
EighthHavana,1990

new: victim issues considered
new: domestic violence considered

NinthCairo, 1995

growing attention to transnational(organized) crime
new: environmental crimeconsidered

14

Tenth
Vienna,2000

new: rule of law considered

Eleventh
Bangkok,2005

crime increasingly seen as threat
to national security

TwelfthSalvador,2010

new: cybercrime considered
new: education for justiceconsideredchanges in the Congresses
growing participation by developing
countries
first Congress Workshop
technical assistance becomesrecurring agenda item
first Congress held outside Europe
regional preparatory meetingsorganized for the first timenumber of national delegations
exceeds 100
outcome routed to different
addressees (e.g., GA, ECOSOC)

notable UN
developments

1972: ad hoc
UN Crime
Committee
becomespermanent

first Congress in a developing
country
Arabic and Chinese added as official
languages
interregional expert preparatory
meetings organized
first pre-Congress consultations
first UN crime survey given toCongress
votes on several resolutions
32 different documents adopted
45 separate resolutions adopted

interregional expert preparatory
meetings no longer organized
Congress shortened to 8 days
number of participants nears 2,000“omnibus” resolution
first high-level segment (held at theend of the Congress)
first consolidated Congress
Declaration; no separate resolutions
institutionalized Congress follow-up

number of participants reaches
3,000

1991: UN Crime
Committee
replaced by UN
Crime
Commission

2000: MDGs
adopted
2002: GA res
56/119 on theCongresses
2003: UNTOC
enters into
force
2005: UNCAC
enters into
force
2006: expert
group meetingon Congresses

FEATURED ARTICLE

UN Crime
Congress
ThirteenthDoha, 2015

Fourteenth
Kyoto,
2021

changes in the approach to crime,
as reflected in the Congresseschanges in the Congresses
Congress Workshops “interlocked”
with topics
high-level segment shifted to
beginning of Congress
number of national delegations
exceeds 140
number of participants nears 4,000
first major UN conference to beheld in a hybrid format(260 on-site participants and 5,300
on-line participants)

notable UN
developments
2015: SDGs
adoptedThe officials of the Congress (referred to collectively as the general committee; broadly similar to the
Bureau of the UN Crime Commission) consist of the President (by tradition, the head of the delegation of thehost Government), and 27 vice-presidents, a chairperson for each of the two Committees, as well as a generalrapporteur.
The Secretary-General is represented by a senior UN official referred to as the Secretary-General of theCongress, who is assisted by the Executive Secretary. The extensive responsibilities of the Executive
Secretary include ensuring that all of the official documentation as well as interpretation services are available
in the official languages, servicing the meetings (including maintaining the list of speakers for the chairperson)
and assisting the rapporteurs in the drafting of the reports.
Following an innovation adopted for the Thirteenth UN Crime Congress in 2015, each Workshop precedes
the discussion on its respective agenda item, and the results of the Workshop are reported to the Committee
under that agenda item. Each Workshop is thus “interlocked” with the corresponding agenda item.
While the discussion on the agenda items tends to focus on policy and on developments in the different
member states, the Workshops are intended to be more practical and technical, of interest in particular topractitioners. Each Workshop is prepared by one or more institute in the UN Programme Network of
Institutes, in cooperation with the UNODC and at times individual member states.
Ancillary meetings are organized in connection with the Congresses. These are meetings of nongovernmental, professional organizations and geographical interest groups. The level of discussion at suchmeetings has often been quite high. The coordination of these ancillary meetings is done by the International
Scientific and Professional Advisory Council (ISPAC), and in practice by one individual working in close
coordination with the Secretariat and the host government, Mr. Gary Hill. Under his guidance, the ancillary
meetings are scheduled so that, to the extent possible, these do not overlap with formal sessions or otherancillary meetings covering similar issues.24
Various professional and regional associations may wish to take advantage of the presence of many of
their members at the Congress site, and organize meetings that are limited to their members and to invited
guests. Such closed meetings may also cover a specific item where security is concerned (such as the trainingof police cybercrime technicians). Also these meetings are coordinated, on request of the UNODC, by ISPAC.
At an exhibition organized throughout the duration of the UN Crime Congress, various governments,
NGOs, professional associations, UN bodies (including the Programme Network Institutes) and commercial
vendors present information on their work or products.
Each UN Crime Congress produces a single document called a Congress Declaration “containing
24

Through the efforts of Mr. Hill and those of his team of volunteer “interns”, ancillary meetings at the more recent UN
Crime Congresses have also been provided with interpretation as needed, and summaries of the different ancillary meetings
have been made available.

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recommendations derived from the deliberations of the high-level segment, the round tables and theworkshops, to be submitted to the Commission for its consideration.”
The concept of a single Congress Declaration was introduced at the 2000 UN Crime Congress, andreplaced the different resolutions that earlier Congresses had adopted on a wide range of topics.
The (draft) Congress Declarations are negotiated in advance of the Congress, using as their basis therecommendations and conclusions from the regional preparatory meetings.
The Congress Declaration is not the only outcome of each Congress. In addition to the official report of
the Congress, each Congress produces a considerable amount of documentation, such as the official backgrounddocuments prepared by the Secretariat (which have been of very high quality), the reports of the regional
preparatory meetings, a number of conference room documents, a large number of documents submitted byvarious participants in the different categories, as well as the unofficial report of the ancillary meetings.
At the more recent UN Crime Congresses, the respective UN Crime Programme Network Institute that
had the lead role in organizing each Workshop has usually produced a report containing the various panelpresentations and related material. In respect of the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth UN Crime Congresses,
thanks to cooperation between the UNODC and the respective host government, much of this material has
been made available through the Congress website,25 thus providing a wealth of information even for thosepractitioners, policy-makers and researchers around the world who had not participated, and in this way
increasing the impact of the Congresses.
Finally, it may be noted that over the past two decades, both the UN Secretariat and the UN Crime
Commission have devoted increasing attention to ensuring that the UN Crime Congresses are not “one-off”
events, which are forgotten as soon as preparations begin on the next five-year cycle. A standing item on theagenda of the UN Crime Commission is the UN Crime Congresses, during which implementation of action
points raised by the previous Congress is reviewed and discussed, at the same time as the preparations forthe next Congress are advanced. This ensures continuity in the process.
The Fourteenth UN Crime Congress in Kyoto, 202126
The Fourteenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice was organized in
Kyoto, Japan, from 7 to 12 March 2021. It continued the long tradition of the world’s largest get-togethers on
crime and justice, but in some respects, it was a very different Congress. Above all, it was the first major
UN conference in any field to be organized after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, with only a few
hundred participants on-site, and the vast majority, some 5,300, participating online from all around theworld. The Kyoto Congress set the pattern for how this can be done in such unprecedented circumstances.
What is more, the Kyoto Declaration, the main outcome of the Crime Congress, is remarkably substantive,
balanced, well-structured and well written. The Kyoto Declaration is the politically most important substantive
outcome of the Congress. It is a political statement negotiated by the member states in advance of theCongress and adopted by the member states on the opening day of the Congress.
While the Kyoto Declaration itself is not binding, it is of great significance to the international community.
It has been laboriously drafted and negotiated, and since the representatives of the member states gathered
in Kyoto have adopted it, it is clear that the document embodies their vision of what member states shouldcommit to on the national level and how they would like to see international cooperation evolve.
The Kyoto Declaration is balanced in the sense that it deals with crime prevention and criminal justiceat different levels, from local to national and international issues. It covers a wide range of issues, including
the need to support victims and vulnerable communities, gender-sensitive crime prevention, the rule of law,transnational crime, anti-corruption, emerging forms of crime, as well as the operation of the domestic
criminal justice system and international cooperation. The Kyoto Declaration is also very timely, above all25

http://www.unodc.org/congress/en/previous/previous-13.html
See Matti Joutsen, Impressions from the Fourteenth UN Crime Congress and the attached report, available at https://heuni.fi/-/14th-un-crime-congress-matti-joutsen

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by including several paragraphs on the impact and response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
2.5. The Conference of the States Parties of the two UN Crime Conventions
The governing structures of the two UN Crime Conventions steer the respective crime-related work of
the member states that are parties to the conventions:• the Conference of the States Parties to the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime;27
and• the Conference of the States Parties to the UN Convention against Corruption.28
Five Working Groups have been established under the mandate of the UNTOC CoSP and two Working
Groups as well as one expert group under the mandate of the UNCAC CoSP, in order to discuss particular
topics related to the conventions. Three of the UNTOC working groups deal with each of the three protocols(trafficking in persons, the smuggling of migrants, and trafficking in firearms). A fourth UNTOC working
group deals with international cooperation, and a fifth with technical assistance. The UNCAC working
groups deal, respectively, with prevention and asset recovery, and there is an expert group that deals withinternational cooperation.
The respective Conferences of the States Parties are convened in alternate years; the CoSP for UNTOC
will meet in 2022, followed by the CoSP for UNCAC in 2023. The working groups under the two CoSPs,
however, generally meet annually.
The work of the CoSPs clearly overlaps with the work of the UN Crime Programme related to, respectively,transnational organized crime and corruption. However, each have somewhat different constituencies (not all
UN member states are parties to UNTOC or its protocols, or to UNCAC), and there are significant differencesin the legal obligations involved. The two UN Crime Conventions consist of “hard law,” while the UN Crime
Commission operates on the basis of consensus in its negotiation largely of soft law resolutions and declarations.
In 2009, a mechanism for review of the implementation of UNCAC was established. This involves anextensive programme of peer review in each of the state parties, with an annual cycle of reviews and, whereagreed, on-site visits by the experts conducting the peer review.29 Although the UNCAC peer review
mechanism was less intensive and thorough than the corresponding peer review conducted for example
within the framework of the OECD for its convention on bribery, the process has arguably succeeded inencouraging many states parties to change their legislation and update their anti-corruption structures andpolicies.
Following the apparent successes of this process and mechanism, lengthy negotiations were conducted inorder to establish a corresponding mechanism for the review of implementation of UNTOC and its three
protocols. These proved difficult, for a variety of reasons. The UNCAC review mechanism did appear to be
successful, but it was clearly very resource-intensive. Since 2009, when the UNCAC review mechanism wasestablished, the UN’s ability to identify funds for similar activities in the UNTOC area proved difficult.
Furthermore, UNTOC, in comparison to UNCAC, was arguably more complex, in that it involved not only
the Convention, but also the three protocols, each of which dealt with a very different set of issues andinvolved somewhat different sets of states parties as well as stakeholders.
Ultimately, agreement was reached in 2018 on a mechanism for the review of the implementation of
UNTOC and its three protocols. As compared to the corresponding mechanism for the review of UNCAC,
the UNTOC mechanism was “lighter”, in that it relied far more on voluntary participation of the states
parties.30
27

See https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/organized-crime/intro/UNTOC.html
See https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CAC/index.html
29
See Matti Joutsen and Adam Graycar, When Experts and Diplomats Agree: Negotiating Peer Review of the UN
Convention Against Corruption, Journal of Global Governance Vol. 18, No. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 2012), pp. 425-439.
30
The UNTOC review process is outlined in https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNTOC/COP/SESSION_10/
Resolutions/Resolution_10_1_-_English.pdf
28

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2.6. The United Nations Crime Programme Network of Institutes
The United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme Network of Institutes (PNI) has
grown over the years to consist of seventeen institutes, the International Scientific and Professional Advisory
Council (ISPAC) and (formally speaking) the UNODC. These institutes have a variety of different mandates.
Nonetheless, they all share a commitment to working together within the framework of the United Nations
Crime Programme.
To list the PNI institutes very broadly by their mandate:- the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, UNICRI, Turin (established1968);- five institutes with a primarily regional mandateo the Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders; Tokyo(UNAFEI, the oldest institute; 1962);
o the Latin American Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders (ILANUD);San José, 1975;o the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations(HEUNI); Helsinki, 1981;o the African Regional Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders(UNAFRI), Kampala, 1987; ando the Naif Arab University for Security Sciences (NAUSS); Riyadh, 1972;- seven specialized institutes / entities, each with an international mandateo the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy (ICCLR & CJP);
Vancouver, 1991;
o the International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations Crime
Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme (ISPAC), Milan, 1991;
o the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights (SII), Siracusa, 1972;o the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI); Lund, 1984;o the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime (ICPC); Montreal, 1994;
o Institute for Security Studies (ISS); Pretoria, 1991; ando the Basel Institute on Governance / the International Centre for Asset Recovery, Basel, 2003; and- five national level instituteso the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC); Canberra, 1973;o the Korean Institute of Criminology and Justice (KICJ), Seoul, 1989;
o the National Institute of Justice (NIJ); Washington D.C., 1968;o the Thailand Institute of Justice (TIJ), Bangkok, 2011; ando the College for Criminal Law Science (CCLS), Beijing, 2005.
The interregional institute, the first four regional institutes listed above, and ISPAC were establishedspecifically within the framework of the UN Crime Programme. NAUSS, the six specialized institutes andthe five national level institutes each have their own original mandate, but have agreed (usually through amemorandum of understanding) to cooperate with the UNODC and the UN Crime Programme.
The report of the Secretary-General to the first session of the UN Crime Commission, in 1992, laid out thefunctions of the Programme Network of Institutes:31(1) service as a link between the UN and the member states in the different regions;(2) promotion of interregional, regional and subregional cooperation;(3) fostering UN criminal policy;(4) keeping member states abreast of the work and perspectives of the UN;(5) advising the Secretariat of the special needs, concerns and priorities of the region; and(6) assistance in the implementation of the UN Crime Programme.
The actual activities of the individual PNI institutes and entities can be divided into four “baskets”:- activities that are carried out in accordance with mandates formulated by the UN Commission on
Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. Examples include organization of workshops at the UN
31

E/CN.15/1992/3, para 5.

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Congresses and the Workshop connected with the thematic debate at annual sessions of the UN Crime
Commission;
activities that otherwise directly support the work of the UNODC. Examples include assisting the
UNODC in the preparation of documentation for the UN Crime Congresses and the sessions of the UN
Crime Commission, assistance in organizing regional preparatory meetings for the UN Crime
Congresses, and organization together with the UNODC of various expert meetings and training
programmes;
activities that otherwise contribute to implementing UN mandates in crime prevention and criminal
justice. Examples include various training programmes and research projects; andactivities that are conducted primarily in accordance with mandates coming from sources other thanthe UN. This is the case in particular with the five national level institutes, which are primarily
accountable to their respective national Government.

The two clearest examples of the contribution of the PNIs to the UN Crime Programme are in connection
with the organization of the UN Crime Congresses, and in the organization of the annual sessions of the UN
Crime Commission.
The PNI has had two specific roles to play in the organization of the UN Crime Congresses. First, in the
preparations for the following UN Crime Congress, some institutes (such as ILANUD, but also for example
UNAFRI and NAUSS) have been instrumental in organizing regional preparatory meetings, and in mobilizing
regional interest in participation. Second, beginning with the organization by HEUNI and UNICRI of aworkshop at the 1985 UN Crime Congress in Milan on juvenile justice, the PNIs have assumed a considerable
share of the responsibility for the UN Crime Congress workshops. This role of the institutes was formallyrecognized by the UN Crime Commission in 2001.
Since 2001, the PNIs have organized side events at the sessions of the UN Crime Commission andancillary meetings at the UN Crime Congresses. The PNIs have also been responsible, together with the
UNODC, for the organization of the Workshop associated with the respective theme of each session.

3. Who’s who in the UN Crime Programme
3.1. The member states
The member states are the most important units in the UN Crime Programme. This is evident alreadyfrom the formulation of General Assembly resolution 46/152, which defines the mandate of the UN Crime
Commission as helping member states in preventing crime and in improving the response to crime.
The importance of member states is also heightened by the fact that the UN Crime Commission consistsof forty member states elected by ECOSOC, and by the fact that the budget of the UN to conduct this work
comes almost entirely from assessments from member states (the regular UN budget) and from so-called
extrabudgetary funds, which also are largely from member states.
In order to assure the equitable distribution of seats in various UN bodies (such as the UN Crime
Commission), the 193 member states have been divided into regional groups as follows:32• the African Group, with 54 member states;• the Asia-Pacific Group, with 53 member states;• the Eastern European Group, with 23 member states;• the Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC), with 33 member states; and• the Western European and Others Group (WEOG), with 28 member states, plus one member state (theUnited States) as an observer state.
A variety of other regional groupings exist within the United Nations. Two important ones (in the sensethat for example they engage in regional consultations during sessions of the UN Crime Commission, and32

https://www.un.org/dgacm/en/content/regional-groups

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their respective spokesperson may give statements) are the G-77 + China (an organization of developing
countries, with 131 members) and the European Union (with 27 members).
In the UN Crime Programme, the political “weight” of a member state in discussions at the UN Crime
Commission, the UN Crime Congress or the Conferences of the States Parties to the two UN Crime
Conventions is often of less importance than the professional competence and negotiating skill of the individual
representative of the member state in question. Small and large member states alike have experience andinsights to share. The “spirit of Vienna” that seeks consensus on all issues at UN Crime Programme meetings,
without the need to resort to a vote, underlines the importance of getting the cooperation of all member
states.
3.2. The specialized agencies and the PNIs
A number of specialized UN agencies (such as ILO, UNESCO and WHO) may have an interest in the
topics on the agenda of the various UN Crime Programme meetings, and they often participate as observers.
Strictly speaking, a “specialized UN agency” is an autonomous organization that works with the UN (andother agencies) under the coordination of ECOSOC. However, at times various units of the UN Secretariat
itself (such as the United Nations Development Programme) will send representatives to UN Crime
Programme meeting and be listed as a “specialized UN agency.”33
At UN Crime Congresses and sessions of the UN Crime Commission, the PNIs (see section 2.6.) havegenerally been classified as belonging in the category of specialized UN agencies. They participate as
observers.
3.3. Intergovernmental organizations
Formally, an intergovernmental organization is one in which the members are national governments. The
United Nations itself is the best-known example. Other examples that have played an important role in thecrime prevention and criminal justice sector are the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States,
the African Union and the European Union.34
Intergovernmental organizations participate in many UN Crime Programme meetings as observers.
3.4. Non-governmental organizations
As is the case with intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) participate
in UN Crime Programme meetings as observers. The role of non-governmental organizations in the UN ingeneral, and in the UN Crime Programme in particular, has evolved considerably over the years.35
When the United Nations was founded in 1945 as an intergovernmental organization, non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) successfully lobbied for a provision in the Charter that grants NGOs consultative status
with the Economic and Social Council. Article 71 of the UN Charter states:“The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements for consultation
with non-governmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its
33
The most recent UN Crime Congress, the Fourteenth, used the following separate sub-categories of specialized UN
agencies: the United Nations; representatives of United Nations Secretariat units; United Nations bodies and agencies; theUnited Nations Interregional Institute, affiliated regional institutes and centres of the UN Crime Prevention and Criminal
Justice Programme Network; and specialized agencies.
34
Although the International Criminal Police Organization is usually listed in this category, it is strictly speaking notintergovernmental, since its membership consists of the criminal police entities of different countries.
35
See Matti Joutsen, What is the Role of the Public in Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice? The Debate in the United
Nations, UNAFEI Resource Material Series 105, pp. 49-69, Tokyo 2018, available at https://www.unafei.or.jp/publications/
pdf/RS_No105/No105_9_VE_Joutsen_2.pdf

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competence. Such arrangements may be made with international organizations
and, where appropriate, with national organizations after consultation with theMember of the United Nations concerned.”
ECOSOC rules of procedure recognize NGOs as a specific category of participants.36
On the basis of Article 71 of the UN Charter, a distinction is made between NGOs with consultative
status with ECOSOC, and other NGOs. Those with consultative status have a standing invitation to attend
for example the sessions of the UN Crime Commission as well as the UN Crime Congresses, whereas otherNGOs need to apply to the UN Secretariat for an invitation to attend.
The International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council (ISPAC) was established in 1991 to serve
as a structure for networking among NGOs, as well as academic institutions interested in the work of the
UN Crime Programme. In addition, alliances of NGOs with consultative and associated status have been
established in both New York (1972) and Vienna (1983).
In the past, the role of NGOs has been quite discernible in the drafting of the UN standards and norms
on crime prevention and criminal justice, beginning with the first such standard and norm, the Standard
Minimum Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRs), which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1955.
The SMRs had, indeed, been drafted under the auspices of the IPPC. Especially during the time of the UN
Crime Committee, other standards and norms were generally drafted by outside experts, who often worked
together with various NGOs and academic institutions that were active in respect of the subject matter ofthe draft. These drafts were generally then submitted to a UN Crime Congress for approval and action.
Currently, however, new standards and norms are generally drafted at UNODC Expert Meetings convenedin accordance with a mandate given by the UN Crime Commission. The draft will then be submitted to the
UN Crime Commission for action.
3.5. Individual experts
The large majority of persons attending UN Crime Programme meetings represent a member state or
an organization. However, individual experts continue to play a role in the UN Crime Programme. They forma recognized category of participant at UN Crime Congresses. Perhaps more importantly, individual
practitioners and academics have been active in various technical assistance projects, and in the drafting ofmanuals and other documentation being prepared by the UNODC and the PNIs.

4. The products of the UN Crime Programme
4.1. The UN Crime Programme standards and norms
The term “standard and norm” refers, in the context of the UN Crime Programme, to a set of instruments
adopted by the General Assembly and ECOSOC (and in a few exceptional cases, by other bodies) that aredesigned as benchmarks for the development of crime prevention and the criminal justice system. As notedon the UNODC website,37 “These standards and norms provide flexible guidance for reform that accounts
for differences in legal traditions, systems and structures whilst providing a collective vision of how criminal
justice systems should be structured.”36

Rules of Procedure of the Functional Commissions of the Economic and Social Council, available at http://www.ohchr.org/
Documents/HRBodies/CHR/RoP.pdf
 	  Rule 75 provides for the right of NGOs to designate representatives to attend public meetings of the commission andits subsidiary organs as observers. Rule 76 provides for consultation with NGOs, including the right to be heard by theCommission.
37
https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/commissions/CCPCJ/ccpcj-standards-and-norms.html

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Over the years, a considerable number of UN standards and norms have been adopted.38 The first to be
adopted was the Standard Minimum Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the SMRs. Originallyadopted in 1955, these have been updated in 2015. The revised version is known as “the Nelson Mandela
Rules.”
Other key standards and norms deal with- corrections, such as the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for Non-custodial Measures (theTokyo Rules), the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial
Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules), and the Basic principles on the use of restorative
justice programmes in criminal matters;- torture and capital punishment, such as the Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Being
Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the
Safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty;- justice for children, such as the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration ofJuvenile Justice (the Beijing Rules), United Nations Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency(the Riyadh Guidelines), the United Nations Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their
Liberty, and the United Nations Model Strategies and Practical Measures on the Elimination ofViolence against Children in the Field of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice;- crime prevention, such as the Guidelines for cooperation and technical assistance in the field of urban
crime prevention, and the Guidelines for the Prevention of Crime;- violence against women, such as the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, andthe Updated Model Strategies and Practical Measures on the Elimination of Violence against Womenin the Field of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice;- victims of crime, such as the Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuseof Power; and- the operation of the criminal justice system, such as the Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement
Officials, the Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, theBasic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, the Guidelines on the Role of Prosecutors, theBasic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, and the United Nations Principles and Guidelines on Accessto Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems.
Standards and norms are commonly referred to as “soft law” instruments, in the sense that they provide
guidance but are not legally binding. This does not mean that standards and norms, as “soft law”, aremeaningless, and have no practical effect. The significance of soft law, including standards and norms, does
not lie in any assumed legal binding effect. The significance lies elsewhere, on both the national and theinternational level.
On the national level, international standards and norms may have an instrumental value in guiding
national development.39 They may be used as persuasive arguments by decision-makers in individual
jurisdictions when these decision-makers seek to justify certain courses of action that they would havepreferred even if the standard or norm did not exist. When selecting from among various alternative
approaches to achieving a certain end, the decision-makers may thus defend their choice by referring to
specific provisions in, for example, the Nelson Mandela Rules, the Bangkok Rules, or the Tokyo Rules.
Similarly, international standards and norms can also be used by citizens, non-governmental organizations
and other stakeholders in trying to influence their government to change laws and policy in a certain
direction.
It is difficult to analyse the actual impact of international standards and norms on the domestic level, due
to a number of factors: the absence of an obligation to report, the heterogeneity of the criminal justicesystems of different states, the possibility of different interpretations of the same text, and the difficulty indetermining if a specific change in national law, policy or practice was due to the influence of a United38

See https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/justice-and-prison-reform/compendium.html
The most widely known example of a standard and norm guiding national development is the Standard Minimum Rules
for the Treatment of Prisoners. It has clearly guided national practice in corrections and, in several cases, helped bring about
legal reform.

39

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Nations standard and norm, or to other factors.
Nonetheless, many reports from states to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime cite examples of
the impact, and the literature shows several further examples of impact. In many states, the standards andnorms are becoming part of the national discourse on crime prevention and criminal justice.
On the international level, “soft law” may be seen as an intermediate stage in the formulation of ideas andconcepts that may in time emerge as “hard law”, in the form of international agreements. When ideas areembodied in standards and norms, the recognition and declaration of certain principles and even detailed
rules may be intended to have a direct influence on the practice of states. If this happens, they contribute to
the creation of customary international law, which is widely recognized as binding on states. Standards andnorms, even if they are not in themselves binding, may thus become a source of international law, inparticular if they are drafted in the form of an obligation (e.g., “states shall” do something, as opposed to“states may consider” doing something, or “states are invited” to do something).
4.2. Resolutions
Much of the time of participants at sessions of the UN Crime Commission (and ECOSOC and the General
Assembly), and at sessions of the CoSPs, is devoted to the consideration of draft resolutions. Resolutions areimportant for several different types of reasons.
First, on the substantive level, a resolution (when adopted) embodies the sense of the member states of
the United Nations: what are the priority issues in crime prevention and criminal justice, and what should
be done by the international community in general. They can, for example, call the attention of the member
states, and the international community as a whole, to the emergence of new challenges, such as thedifficulties faced by prisoners with a Covid-19 infection.
On the aspirational level, a resolution may express the will of member states to call upon member states,or to invite other actors (such as intergovernmental organizations) to take specific action.
On the political level, a resolution may be used to promote a certain political agenda: condemning certain
developments, action taken or incidents, welcoming other developments, stressing the importance of certain
values, and so on.
On the practical level, a resolution often requests that the Secretariat take specific actions, such as
prepare a report, organize a meeting or provide certain assistance to member states on request.
Finally, on the linguistic level, and as a document reflecting the outcome of UN negotiations, the phrasing
and terminology used in resolutions often becomes “agreed language,” which may well be referred to in
future negotiations.
The process of the consideration of draft resolutions consists of the following phases:- a member state formulates the purpose and content of the intended draft resolution, and (preferably)
the first draft version for circulation;- initial informal consultations with at least some of the key delegations to solicit their comment and,ideally, their tentative promise to serve as sponsors of the draft in the negotiations, or otherwise toprovide support;40- the formal tabling of the draft resolution, after which it will be translated into all the official UN
languages and distributed;- informal negotiations with all “interested member states.” These are closed negotiations, which may
generally be attended only by representatives of member states. Other individuals may be present, if
the other participants agree;- presentation of the results of the informal negotiations in the “Committee of the Whole” (perhaps with40

Formally, the agreement of all member states which identify as sponsors of a draft resolution should be secured whenamendments are proposed.

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an updated “clean copy” of the text of the draft resolution, as amended); this stage may involve further
negotiations; andsubmission of the results of the negotiations to the plenary for adoption.

The informal negotiations will generally not have the benefit of interpretation into all of the official UN
languages. The considerations in the Committee of the Whole and in plenary, in turn, will have interpretation.
The negotiation of draft resolutions can be quite time-consuming, and some sessions of the UN Crime
Commission have been marked by very lengthy negotiations on multiple draft resolutions that last far into
the night (and the early morning). Generally, the negotiations do lead to the adoption of the draft resolution,although often with extensive amendments in “compromise language.” If towards the end of a session of the
UN Crime Commission it appears that consensus on the draft resolution will not be reached (or could bereached only with substantive amendments that do not meet the interests of the sponsors of the draft), thedraft resolution may be withdrawn.
4.3. UNODC documentation and UN Crime Programme meeting reports
One of the major functions of the Secretariat is to prepare documentation for the consideration of UN
Crime Programme meetings, such as the sessions of the UN Crime Commission, the UN Crime Congresses,
and the Conferences of the States Parties to the two UN Crime Conventions. The result is a steady flow of
information that has been collected and processed by the Secretariat.
The documentation, which is generally of a very high quality indeed, seeks to provide the conceptual
framework for the expected discussion, set out the state of knowledge on the relevant issues, describe what
action has been taken, and possibly suggest for consideration what action should be taken. This is a challenging
task for several reasons, not least because of fairly stringent limits on the length of documents that havebeen imposed in order to keep down the costs of translation and processing of the documents into the six
official languages.
The final stage of work at UN Crime Programme meetings involves the adoption of the report. The
Secretariat generally assists the rapporteur in the drafting of the report, and the draft text is usually very
carefully constructed to reflect what should be an impartial summary of the discussions.
Various UN Crime Programme meetings may, furthermore, request that the UNODC prepare a reporton a subject, for submission and consideration at a subsequent meeting.
In addition to documentation connected directly with UN Crime Programme meetings, the UNODC has
produced, to an increasing pace after the turn of the millennium, many manuals, handbooks, training
materials, reports and compendiums that are intended to be used for example in technical assistanceprojects.41 These include- model legislation that can be used in different legal systems in the implementation of the two UN
Crime Conventions,- manuals and handbooks on how to prevent, investigate and prosecute specific offences (such as
trafficking in persons and the smuggling of migrants),- digests of legal cases showing how different courts have dealt with criminal cases related to the UN
Crime Conventions, and- manuals and handbooks on different aspects of international legal cooperation (such as mutual legal
assistance, extradition, the transfer of prisoners, the recovery of assets).
The UNODC continues to produce excellent research publications. Special reference can be made to theannual Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, and the Global Studies on Homicide and the World Wildlife
Crime Reports. Reports on different aspects of transnational organized crime, from different regions, havealso been published.
41

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/international-cooperation/publications.html

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4.4. United Nations Crime Conventions42
As noted in section 1.4, the adoption of the two UN Crime Conventions – the UN Convention against
Transnational Organized Crime and its three protocols, as well as the UN Convention against Corruption –marked a clear transition in the UN Crime Programme, towards an emphasis on hard law and on theeffectiveness of the response of the international community to crime.
The two UN Crime Conventions have influenced international cooperation in at least three respects:- 	 as global conventions, they have considerably expanded the geographical scope of cooperation,- 	 they provide common definitions of certain key offences, and require (or, in some cases, at leastencourage) states parties to criminalize these acts, and- they have standardized and contributed to the development of procedural forms of cooperation.
Global scope. The UN Crime Conventions are global instruments, open to countries around the world.  
Most earlier agreements were bilateral or at most regional. The UN Crime Conventions provide a relatively
clear basis for cooperation between countries, regardless of their legal system or the underlying principlesof the operation of their criminal justice system. At present (April 2022) UNTOC has 190 parties (and its
three protocols have somewhat fewer), and UNCAC has 189 parties. Both thus have considerable geographicalscope.
Criminalization requirements. UNTOC requires that states parties criminalize four types of conduct.
These are, respectively, participation in an organized criminal group, money laundering, corruption andobstruction of justice. In particular the first two of these articles marked a considerable shift in thinking inmany countries. During the negotiations, the definition of participation in an organized criminal group proved
difficult, since few countries had an offence in their laws that would cover the concept. The definition
ultimately represented a merger of the common law concept of conspiracy with elements of the Italian and
U.S. concept of a racketeering influenced and corrupt organization.
UNCAC contains a number of criminalizations. The provisions on money laundering and obstruction ofjustice are broadly similar to those to be found in UNTOC. Understandably, UNCAC goes into greater detailthan UNTOC in requiring the criminalization of corruption offences, such as bribery, and misappropriationor other diversion of property by a public official. In addition, UNCAC contains definitions of some acts thatstates parties are encouraged to criminalize, although there is no obligation to do so. This non-mandatory
approach is the result of the fact that, during the negotiations, many states were dissatisfied with what they
saw as the vagueness of such definitions of offences as trading in influence, abuse of functions, and illicit
enrichment. In addition, some states parties opposed making bribery in the private sector a mandatory
offence.
Procedural cooperation. The impact of the two UN Crime Conventions on procedural cooperation is
illustrated in the following table by comparing what law enforcement cooperation and judicial cooperation
was typically like before the conventions entered into force (referred to here as “traditional cooperation”)
with the “new, improved” cooperation to which the two UN Crime Conventions contributed.

42

For more on the UN Crime Conventions, see Matti Joutsen (2011), The Impact of United Nations Crime Conventions
on International Cooperation, in Cindy Smith, Sheldon X. Shang and Rosemary Barberet (eds.), Routledge Handbook ofInternational Criminology, Routledge, pp. 112-124.

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Table 2: Two regimes of cooperation
The traditional cooperation regime
each country uses its own “traditional” investigativemeans
each country carries out its own criminal
investigation
limited scope of offences; lists of offences
limited scope of mutual assistance available
no provisions on confiscation of the proceeds ofcrime
use of diplomatic channels in requesting and giving
assistancebureaucratic
requested state applies solely its own laws in
granting assistance
extradition of nationals not possible

The “new, improved” cooperation regime
introduction of various modern investigative means
possibility of joint investigations
broad scope of offences; no lists of offences
many possible forms of mutual assistance available
such provisions are included, as are provisions on
mutual assistance related to confiscation of theproceeds of crimeuse of a Central Authority, and the possibility of
direct contacts between lower-level authorities“good practice” standards followed (e.g. thepossibility of consultation before possible refusal ofa request)
procedures requested by the requesting state canbe applied if these are not contrary to the laws of
the requested statenationals can be extradited, although subject topossible conditions

Introduction of new investigative means. Because of the diversity of legal systems, investigative techniquesthat have proven useful in one country may not be allowed in another. This applies, for example, to suchtechniques as electronic surveillance, controlled delivery, undercover operations, the promising of immunityfrom prosecution or a reduced sentence in return for cooperation in investigations, and the use of anonymous
witnesses. If an investigative technique is legal in one country (A) but not legal in another (B), this may resultin at least two types of problems. The first is that A will be frustrated by the inability of the law enforcement
authorities of B to use what A regards as an effective tool. The second is that the judicial authorities of B
may not allow the use of any evidence that has been gathered through the use of what, for B, are illegal
techniques, even if the evidence has been obtained in a jurisdiction where the evidence was acquired legally.
In response to this problem, the two UN Crime Conventions encourage State Parties to allow the use ofcertain special investigative techniques. UNTOC and UNCAC refer to controlled delivery, electronic andother forms of surveillance, and undercover operations. These techniques are especially useful in dealing
with sophisticated organized criminal groups because of the dangers and difficulties inherent in gaining
access to their operations and gathering information and evidence for use in domestic prosecutions or inother States Parties in the context of mutual legal assistance schemes.
Possibility of joint investigations. A number of provisions in the UN Crime Conventions focus on overcoming
problems that result when each country carries out its own criminal investigations. Among the innovations
are the possibility of the establishment of joint investigation teams, cooperation in the protection of witnesses,
the establishment of formal channels for the exchange of operational and general information between police
agencies, and the possibility of appointing liaison officers.
Broad scope of offences. The earliest treaties were based on lists of offences.  If an offence was not includedin the list, a country would not provide mutual legal assistance or grant extradition. The reason for this wasthat countries traditionally wanted to specify in advance for what offences they would consider providing
judicial assistance. This led to several difficulties, including the technical ones that arise due to differences indefinitions of even the most basic offences, such as assault or robbery. UNTOC, in contrast, provided thatcooperation should essentially be provided in cases where the offence fit into a generic definition of“transnational organized crime.”
Broader range of forms of assistance. The earliest agreements on mutual legal assistance treaties concerned
merely the service of summons. UNTOC and UNCAC, in turn, include specific provisions on the transfer of
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criminal proceedings, whereby if a person is suspected of having committed an offence under the laws of one
state party, that state party may request another state party to take action on its behalf in accordance with
the Conven¬tion in question, and the latter would prosecute the alleged offender under its own laws.
It has only been relatively recently that international agreements began to contain provisions on assistancein identifying, tracing and freezing or seizing proceeds of crime for the purpose of eventual confiscation(which can be regarded as a special form of mutual legal assistance). The need to come to grips with theprofit motive behind the rapid growth of drug crime led the drafters of the 1988 Drug Convention to requirethat states parties criminalize money laundering, and also to require states parties to create domestic
mechanisms for the tracing, restraint and confiscation of the proceeds of drug-related crime, and to respondto requests presented by other states parties for the tracing, restraint and confiscation of the proceeds of
drug offences. The 1988 Convention was the primary point of reference in the formulation of the corresponding(albeit broader) provisions in UNTOC and UNCAC.
UNTOC and UNCAC allow several forms of assistance that were not envisaged under earlier international
instruments. Examples include video conferences, and what is known as the “spontaneous transmission of
information”, whereby the authorities are allowed, even without a prior request, to pass on information to
the competent authorities of another state that they believe might be of use.
Use of a Central Authority. Traditional mutual legal assistance treaties required that requests be sent
through diplomatic channels. What this entails is that, for example, a request for evidence, usually originatingfrom the prosecutor, is authenticated by the competent national court in the requesting state, and thenpassed on by that state’s Foreign Ministry to the embassy of the requested state. The embassy sends it on
to the competent judicial authorities of the requested state, generally through the Foreign Ministry in thecapital. Once the request has been fulfilled, the chain is reversed.
UNTOC and UNCAC contain provisions on the concept of a “Central Authority.” Although each stateparty may continue to insist on diplomatic channels, these Conventions require that they identify an authority– in practice, often the Ministry of Justice, although also for example Supreme Courts have been designatedas such – to be competent for the transmission of international requests, and to provide guidance forpractitioners. This has tended to shorten the chain of authorities involved, and accordingly has speeded up
the process of obtaining assistance.
Adoption of “good practice” standards. One of the major problems in mutual legal assistance world-wideis that the requested state is often slow in replying, and suspects must be released from custody due toabsence of evidence. There are many understandable reasons for the slowness: a shortage of trained staff,
linguistic difficulties, differences in procedure that complicate responding, and so on. Nonetheless, it can be
frustrating to investigators and prosecutors to find that a case must be abandoned because even a simple
request is not fulfilled in time. UNTOC makes the point of the importance of promptness in two separate
provisions. UNTOC provides that, if the Central Authority itself responds to the request, it should ensure
speedy and prompt execution. If the Central Authority transmits the request to, for example, the competentcourt, the Central Authority is required to encourage the speedy and proper execution of the request.
According to a separate UNTOC provision, the request is to be executed “as soon as possible” and therequested state is to take “as full account as possible of any deadlines suggested by the requesting State
Party and for which reasons are given.”
Difficulties may also arise due to different legal standards. An example of this is the concept of “prima
facie evidence of guilt” which some countries require as a condition for extradition. Since different countries
apply differing rules of evidence, it may be difficult for a practitioner in one country to know what evidence
would satisfy the requirements of the requested state. Both UNTOC and UNCAC call upon state parties tosimplify their evidentiary requirements in this respect.
Possibility to apply the law and procedures of the requesting state. Since the procedural laws of states differ
considerably, the requesting state may require special procedures (such as notarized affidavits) that are notrecognized under the law of the requested state. Traditionally, the almost immutable principle has been thatthe requested state follows its own procedural law. This principle has led to difficulties, in particular when
the requesting and the requested state represent different legal traditions. For example, the evidence
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transmitted from the requested state may be in the form prescribed by the laws of this state, but such
evidence may be unacceptable under the procedural law of the requesting state.
The modern trend is to allow more flexibility in respect of procedures. According to both UNTOC and
UNCAC, a request shall be executed in accordance with the domestic law of the requested state. However,
the respective provisions go on to say that, to the extent not contrary to the domestic law of the requested
state and where possible, the request shall be executed in accordance with the procedures specified in therequest. Thus, although the two UN Crime Conventions do not go so far as to require that the requested
state comply with the procedural form required by the requesting state, they do clearly exhort the requested
state to do so.
Extradition of nationals. One of the most cherished principles in extradition law has been that states will
not extradite their own nationals and will, at most, undertake to bring them to trial in their own courts.  
Today, more and more states are allowing extradition of their own nationals, although some conditions may
be placed, such as that the national, if convicted, should be returned to his or her own country to serve thesentence.  UNTOC and UNCAC incorporate provisions that reflect this development, by allowing for the
possibility of “temporary surrender” of the fugitive on the condition that this person will be returned to therequested State Party for the purpose of serving any sentence imposed. In cases where the requested staterefuses to extradite a fugitive on the grounds that the fugitive is its own national, the state is often seen tohave an obligation to bring the person to trial. Where extradition is requested for the purpose of enforcing
a sentence, the requested state may also enforce the sentence that has been imposed in accordance with therequirements of its domestic law.
4.5. UN Crime Programme technical assistance
Along with the increased focus of the UN Crime Programme on the implementation of the two UN Crime
Conventions, the UNODC and the PNIs have sought to provide more technical assistance to member statesand other organizations on request.43 Much of the UNODC assistance is provided through its network ofregional and national offices.
Substantive priority areas include organized crime and illicit trafficking (including trafficking in persons,the smuggling of migrants, cybercrime and money laundering), corruption and economic crime, and theprevention of terrorism. Technical assistance is provided for example on preventive and security measures,the identification and monitoring of the extent, dynamics and actors involved in crime, the criminal justiceresponse, and international cooperation and information exchange. The UNODC has developed an extensive
Criminal Justice Assessment Toolkit to be used in this work.44
The technical assistance covers, for example, legislative advice (including support in the drafting oflegislation), assistance in the development of national policy and strategies, and capacity building. The two
UN Crime Conventions as well as the UN standards and norms provide the basic framework, which needs
to be tailored to the national and local situation, including not only the assessed needs and priorities, but also
the legal and administrative system, the human and technical resources, and the cultural and politicalcontext.
Although the projects are generally done in direct cooperation with the member state in question, the
UNODC and the PNIs also emphasize the importance of consensus-building, and the involvement of all the
relevant stakeholders, including the relevant civil society organizations as well as bilateral and multilateral
donors.
43

For an overview of the “lessons learned” in UNODC and PNI technical assistance projects, see Margaret Shaw, Maximizing
the effectiveness of technical assistance provided by Member States in crime prevention and criminal justice. Background
Note for the PNI Workshop at the Fifteenth Session of the UN Crime Commission, International Centre for the Preventionof Crime, 2006, available at https://cipc-icpc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Maximazing_effectiveness_of_technical_
assistance_2006.pdf
44
UNODC Criminal Justice Assessment Toolkit, available at https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/justice-and-prison-reform/
Criminal-Justice-Toolkit.html

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In the planning of UN Crime Programme technical assistance projects, increasing attention has been
given to the importance of adopting an integrated approach, as opposed to the carrying out of short-term,piecemeal, specialized initiatives that do not take into account the broader need in the target country forinstitutional reform, institution building and capacity building. This calls for taking into consideration suchcross-cutting issues as gender mainstreaming, the promotion of human rights, and support for the participationof civil society. Such an emphasis has been strengthened by the adoption by the General Assembly in 2015of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The UNODC and the PNIs seek to promote evidence-based projects, and emphasize the importance ofevaluating the effectiveness and impact of the assistance provided.
Technological development, and in particular the use of video technology, is rapidly changing the way inwhich the UNODC and the PNIs are developing and conducting technical assistance projects. In project
development, a wide range of stakeholders in the country in question can be consulted online, and they canprovide important details on the national or local context. Similarly in the preparation of technical assistancematerials, online meetings can be used to prepare and finalize the drafts. The training can be and is being
provided online to practitioners and other stakeholders. And finally, in evaluating the results of the programme,a wide range of stakeholders can be interviewed individually or together online. This allows for a morecomprehensive assessment than what would be possible with cost-intensive in-person meetings.

5. International sensitivities in the UN Crime Programme
Different states have different priorities, and there are often disagreements over what should be done.
This section identifies some of the issues that have been repeatedly debated within the scope of the UN
Crime Programme, generally in the context of the drafting of resolutions.
5.1. Work on a proposed UN Convention on countering the use of information and communications
technologies for criminal purposesIssue: What should be the scope of the proposed UN Convention on countering ICT technologies forcriminal purposes.
GA resolution 74/247 established an “open-ended ad hoc intergovernmental committee of experts,
representative of all regions, to elaborate a comprehensive international convention on countering the use of
information and communications technologies for criminal purposes”
Appearance of the issue in practice:• Work has begun at the beginning of 2022 on the negotiation of a UN Convention on countering ICT
technologies for criminal purposes (a “UN Convention on Cybercrime”). However, this was precededby over ten years of disagreements over the need for such a convention.
• The main argument for a UN cybercrime convention is the need for a global convention in the draftingof which all UN member states can participate. Existing regional instruments (and here the referenceis generally to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime from 2001, the “Budapest Convention”)45
are argued to not reflect the concerns of developing countries. Furthermore, some countries haveargued in particular that art. 32(b) of the Budapest Convention, which allows states to obtain informationin another country if the lawful owner of the date consents, without the need for approval of the statein question, is a violation of national sovereignty.
• The main arguments against a UN cybercrime convention include the lack of perceived need (thosemaking this argument hold that implementation of existing frameworks, standards and legislation ismore important than the drafting of new instruments), the expense of drafting and implementing a UN
convention, and the difficulties that would arise if there are two or more competing conventions with45

Reference can also be made to the Shanghai Cooperation Council’s Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Ensuring
International Information Security (2009), the League of Arab States Convention on Combatting Information Technology
Offences (2010), and the African Union’s Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection (2011).

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dissimilar provisions.
Now that work has begun on the negotiations, the key issues are likely to concern the respective roleof member states, the private sector (in particular technology companies and service providers), andcivil society in the regulation of cyberspace; the issue of transborder access to data and electronic
evidence; to what extent the proposed convention would cover online content; and to what extent thedata subject has the right to digital privacy.

5.2. Role of civil society
Issue: This (in addition to the current debate over the proposed UN Convention on countering the use of
information and communications technologies for criminal purposes) is perhaps the major disagreement
within the UN Crime Programme at present. It rose to prominence in connection with the negotiation of the
UNCAC implementation review mechanism (2006-2011), and revolves around different understandings of the“intergovernmental nature” of the United Nations. Basically, some states are of the view that non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) should not have a role in many international discussions on crime prevention andcriminal justice within the UN framework, while other states are of the view that non-governmentalorganizations can strengthen the national and international response.46
Appearance of the issue in practice:• Within the framework of the UNCAC implementation review mechanism, NGOs may at present
attend only plenary sessions of the Conference of the States Parties, but not sessions of the working
groups or of the Implementation Review Group (IRG). A one-day “briefing” is organized for duly
accredited NGOs in connection with the annual main session of the IRG.
• This status quo is viewed by some state parties as the result of a “final” decision, resting on a delicate
balance, and should not be re-opened. Other state parties are of the view that the status quo is amatter that should be kept under constant review in view of the “constructive dialogue” between thestates parties and the NGOs called for by the 2011 session of the Conference of States Parties (the“Marrakesh compromise”).
• More generally within the work of the UN Crime Commission, earlier resolutions have included manyreferences to the necessity of states working together with NGOs also on the international level.
Currently, largely the same states that have opposed NGO involvement on the international level inthe review of the implementation of UNCAC tend to object to references in draft resolutions to civilsociety also in other connections.
• If references to NGOs in a draft resolution seem to have strong support, some objecting states may
insist on language to the effect that the activity of such NGOs must be subject to the law of the statein question.
• A related point of contention has been the accreditation of NGOs to various meetings within theframework of the UN Crime Programme. The basic rule is that NGOs that have consultative status
with ECOSOC may attend UN meetings, unless decided otherwise. Other NGOs may apply for
permission to attend. The Secretariat drafts a list of such requests and circulates it among diplomatic
missions in Vienna. Now and then a state has objected to a specific NGO, in which case the matter isdealt with by the Bureau. If the Bureau cannot reach agreement, the issue is decided by the meeting
itself. In such a case, the NGO is assumed to have the right to attend the meeting until and unless themeeting decides otherwise. (So far, such issues have almost always been solved amicably before thestart of the meeting in question.)
5.3. The mandate of the UN: what can be discussed in Vienna?
Issue: how strict can and should the borderlines be between what is discussed within the framework of
the UN Crime Programme, and what is discussed by other elements in the UN system, such as the UN
bodies debating human rights, the advancement of women, education, climate change and urban development?
46

See Civil Society Engagement in the Implementation of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (2015) conference
room paper submitted by Finland to the UNCAC Conference of the States Parties, CAC/COSP/2015/CRP.3.

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Appearance of the issue in practice:• some states may oppose references in draft resolutions to issues (such as violence against women, or
environmental crime) that would seem to overlap with the mandate of other UN bodies, even if theseare simple references to the importance of an issue.  An example was the demand of one representativethat references to human rights be deleted from a draft resolution being discussed in Vienna, on the
grounds that human rights are dealt with in Geneva.
• references that merely cite resolutions and work by other elements of the UN are generally accepted,
in line with the “one UN” approach.
5.4. Financing of activity, including technical assistanceIssue: what activities should be covered by the regular UN budget, and what activities require theidentification of “extrabudgetary funds.” The UN Crime Commission itself cannot decide on the UN budget,and therefore any draft resolution that may have financial implications (staff work by the Secretariat,
organization of a meeting, and so on) would require a “statement of financial implications” from the Secretariat,
and an indication of how the funding would be obtained.
Appearance of the issue in practice:• major donors to the UN budget tend to oppose increases in the regular UN budget, and require thatany additional activities be conducted only if extrabudgetary funding is made available for this purpose.
Those states that support the activity in question may argue that it is so important that it should be
funded from the regular UN budget.
• If there are financial implications which cannot be covered by the regular UN budget, then the phrase“... subject to the availability of extrabudgetary funds” (or something along the same lines), is inserted
into the draft. If it is not possible to identify the source of such funding, then the relevant provisionsof the resolution (if the resolution is adopted) will in practice not lead to any action.
5.5. Conditionality of technical assistanceIssue: Some states requesting technical assistance oppose requirements that, in order to receive suchassistance, they must take certain steps (such as adopt certain legislation or certain policies). They generally
argue that this constitutes interference in domestic matters. Donors, in turn, may be of the view that certain
steps are necessary for the assistance to have the intended impact.
Appearance of the issue in practice:• Some developing countries are sensitive to phrasing of draft resolutions that would appear to imply
that they must take certain action before they can receive any funding. Their principal argument isthat the international community can successfully respond to crime only if all states have the possibility
to take the requisite measures – and therefore, (unconditional) technical assistance is required.
5.6. Multilingualism
Issue: the UN has six working languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Member
states have the right to participate in the work of the United Nations in their preferred language. Nevertheless,much of the work of the UN takes place in informal settings, in which case there is no allocation forinterpretation. In practice, most of the representatives based in Vienna are able to work in English, and theseinformal negotiations will generally be conducted in English.
Appearance of the issue in practice:• Proposals for holding expert meetings or other meetings that do not specifically allow for interpretation
may be opposed by those whose working language would not be made available.
• States may oppose expert meetings in general and require that the meetings be “open-ended
intergovernmental meetings” which would implicitly require that all six UN working languages can beused. (This, in turn, increases the costs of the meetings and lessens the willingness of states to offer tohost such meetings. It also raises the possibility that the participation of NGOs at such a meeting
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might be questioned, on the grounds that the meeting would be “intergovernmental.”)If a meeting (even an “informal meeting”) is held in one UN language only, representatives of otherlanguage groups may argue that any decisions made even provisionally can be subjected to newdebate, once the consideration proceeds to a forum where all six languages may be used.  (In practice,interested governments have cooperated with the UNODC in the organization of such monolingual
expert meetings in order to prepare draft documents, which can then be submitted for the considerationof the UN Crime Commission.)If negotiations are being conducted on the basis of documentation (such as is the case with the
adoption of a draft resolution or draft report), the consideration may be postponed until the documents
are available in all six working languages.

5.7. Recovery of assets
Issue: Concern that some states do not take sufficiently effective action in tracing, freezing, seizing andconfiscating illegally obtained assets and, in particular, in returning them to the country of origin.
Appearance of the issue in practice:• Several developing countries take the view that those countries to which the proceeds of crime (forexample, of corruption) have been transferred have an obligation under the two UN Crime Conventions
to be much more efficient in recovering and repatriating the proceeds of crime. The states to which
the funds are transferred, in turn, are in general of the view that the proper domestic legal proceduremust be followed, and this, in turn, entails the provision of sufficient evidence that the assets inquestion are indeed the proceeds of crime, and that the requesting state (and not any third party) is
the legitimate owner.
5.8. Trafficking in cultural property
Issue: Concern that some states do not take sufficiently effective action in tracing, freezing, seizing andconfiscating trafficked cultural property and, in particular, in returning them to the country of origin.
Appearance of the issue in practice:• As with the debate over the recovery of assets, many developing countries from which culturalartefacts have been taken, are of the view that the states to which the artefacts have been taken are
not sufficiently efficient in tracing, recovering and returning the cultural property. The states to which
the artefacts are transferred, in turn, may be of the view that the artefacts were legally taken out of
the country in question.
• In some cases, developing countries call for the return of artefacts that have been taken from thecountry many years before, although the records showing the provenance of the artefacts may in theinterim have been destroyed, for example in a war.
5.9. Use of peer review
Issue: UNCAC is the first UN convention for which national implementation has been subjected to peer
review. At the time, the concept of peer review was unfamiliar to the representatives of many states, andthere was concern (for example) that allowing foreign states to examine what action has been taken in astate party constitutes intervention in domestic matters, which would be against the UN Charter.47
Appearance of the issue in practice:• Although there were considerable difficulties in the negotiation of the mechanism for the review of theimplementation of UNCAC, and several states parties were sceptical of the concept of peer review (inparticular the necessity for a “country visit” that would allow discussions with a broad range of47

See Matti Joutsen and Adam Graycar, When Experts and Diplomats Agree: Negotiating Peer Review of the UN
Convention Against Corruption, Journal of Global Governance Vol. 18, No. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 2012), pp. 425-439.

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stakeholders), there are at present few, if any, state parties that regard the UNCAC implementation
review mechanism as intrusive. Country visits have been conducted in the vast majority of reviews.
• The major concern has to do with the expense of a multilingual review process, which may, in the caseof an individual country under review, require the translation of hundreds of pages into one or two
languages during the review process, followed by translation of the executive summary into all
working languages. The country visits also entail travel and other costs.
• A separate issue is that the UNCAC peer review mechanism is different from those used for example
by the OECD or the Council of Europe; in particular, in the UNCAC process the state party underreview has control over what information is used and how the report is written, the Implementation
Review Group may not consider the situation in any individual state party, and there is no rigid followup process.
5.10. “Ranking” of member states
Issue: The issue of the ranking of states arose, in the framework of the UN Crime Programme, withconcern by several member states that the “Transparency Index” published by Transparency Internationalmisrepresented the extent of corruption in their countries. In their view, such indexes were not only
misleading, but could even be harmful for example by providing disincentives for foreign investment.
Appearance of the issue in practice:• One of the principles on which the UNCAC implementation review mechanism is based is that thereviews should not involve any ranking of states parties. Thus, the UN avoids comparing the amountof corruption in specific countries. (More generic comparisons, however, are permissible, although theappropriateness also of these would be examined carefully.)• Although the principle of avoiding any “ranking” has thus far been adopted only in the context of
UNCAC, the Secretariat has become cautious also when reporting more generally on the levels ofreported crime, or the operation of the criminal justice system. Tables listing for example the numberof reported homicides or the number of prisoners per capita in different countries tend to be avoided,and may be replaced by charts or graphs showing groups of countries.
5.11. “Questionnaire fatigue”
Issue: Some states are of the view that UNODC notes verbale that ask states for information may place
an excessive burden on practitioners in the different states. For this reason, they would prefer to limit the
number and scope of such requests.
Appearance of the issue in practice:• The UN Crime Commission has considerably curtailed the number of requests for information on
implementation of UN standards and norms.
• The scope of the UN crime trend surveys has been restricted.
5.12. Wording of resolutions: “shall”, “should”, “may consider” (and so on)
Issue: resolutions of UN bodies generally call for action. The obligatory nature of the calls varies, and isusually indicated by phrases such as “states shall ...”, “states may ...” and “states may consider ...”.
Appearance of the issue in practice:• UN Crime Congress declarations and resolutions of sessions of the Conferences of the States Parties
are much more likely than those of the UN Crime Commission to include a mandatory phrase such as“states shall ...” (or, for the Conferences of State Parties, “states parties shall ...”). The UN Crime
Commission, in turn, is generally not deemed to have the mandate to require that member states of
the UN act in a certain way, or that they refrain from taking certain action. For this reason, softer
formulations such as “states may consider ...” or “states are urged to ...” tend to be used.
• The references may be further qualified with phrases such as “subject to their constitutional principles”,
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RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 114••“subject to the basic principles of their legal system” or the like.
In respect of intergovernmental and other bodies, a formulation such as “[IGO X] is invited to ...” may
be used.
In respect of the UN Secretariat, the standard formulation is “the UNODC is requested to ...”

5.13. Incorporation in draft resolutions of references to decisions or the work of other entities
Issue: different entities have different memberships, and different states may well have different views
regarding their effectiveness or indeed their value.
Appearance of the issue in practice:• Language that appears to endorse the work or decisions of other entities will often be weighedcarefully. Such language may well be rejected for example with the argument that not all the membersof the UN Crime Commission (or other UN Crime Programme body) are familiar with the work of theentity in question, and thus cannot endorse its work.
• Language referring to entities that have a restricted membership (such as regional organizations) may
be rejected on the grounds that it is not the role of the UN body in question to comment on them or
implicitly endorse their work.
• Language referring to a specific entity may be rejected as not representative of such entities ingeneral. Alternatively, some states may require that many different entities, from different regions,are listed in the same connection.

6. Ten rules for success in the UN Crime Programme
As with so many negotiations, success at negotiations in UN Crime Programme meetings depends on
preparation of one's own position, anticipation of the arguments that may be put forward to defend opposing
positions, and an ability to influence the course of the negotiations. Negotiators come in many shapes andsizes, representing member states both large and small, and there are no hard-and-fast rules as to who will
“win out” at the end. At times, the outcome may depend on misunderstood statements, seemingly trivial
proposals for amendment, or chance events. Nonetheless, the more influential and successful negotiators in
UN Crime Programme meetings tend to fit a distinct (and rather loose) profile, and appear to abide by thefollowing ten “rules.”6.1. Be polite (and never disrespect the chairman)
International diplomacy is based on at least superficial respect for the views of the other players, even if
you not only totally disagree with these views but cannot understand how any sensible person could suggest
them. One can succeed in negotiations only if one respects, and has the respect of, the other parties. Persons
from different cultures have different styles, and the use of blunt language (especially when interpreted into
the other five working UN language) may unintentionally be regarded as impolite or offensive, taking
attention away from the substance.
This politeness can be seen, for example, when participants are referring to the interventions made byearlier speakers. No matter whether one agrees or disagrees with a statement, the rule is that speakers whowant to refer to what someone said earlier should thank the “[distinguished] representative of X” for his or
her statement and then go on to say if one supports it or, with great regret, cannot support it.
It is of particular importance to be polite to the chairperson. One of the key functions of the chairperson
is to serve as the neutral arbitrator who ascertains the views of the participants, seeks to identify the pointsof conflict, and tries to piece together wording that would achieve consensus. If the chairperson's impartiality
is questioned, this could endanger the success of the entire negotiations. The politeness is shown in thatparticipants, when they are speaking for the first time at a session, almost invariably express sentiments
along the lines of the following: “Thank you Mr./Madame Chairman for giving me the floor. Since this is the34

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first time that my delegation has the opportunity to speak at this meeting, I would like to convey to you, andthrough you to the other members of the Bureau, our profound respect for the important work which you
are doing. We would also like to assure you of our country's commitment to the success of this work ...” (andso on).
6.2. Avoid pomposity
In an article published during the 1980s, the Norwegian criminologist Thomas Mathiesen, after attending
a UN Crime Congress for the first time, identified what he calls the “importance norm” and the “selfimportance norm” at UN Crime Congresses.48 Essentially, the “importance norm” requires that everyone
respects the importance of the work being done, even if it may even seem pointless or silly at times. The“self-importance norm” is clearly linked to the one-upmanship that is so often evident in any social activity,
work or play. If a participant at a UN Crime Programme meeting is able to project an aura of importance(or of experience, or of being knowledgeable), perhaps the other participants will pay closer attention to his
or her views.
Indeed, some pomposity can at times be detected at UN Crime Programme meetings, and some individual
participants do appear to try to bolster their self-importance. At times, this is apparently done for tacticalreasons. For example, there are some speakers who do not use the first-person singular in referring tothemselves, but prefer to speak about “my delegation”: “My delegation is of the view that ...” Apparently,
these speakers believe that an argument would be more persuasive if the audience understood it to reflect
the collective view of the Government of a member state, and not just of one person. (At times, however, thetactic can misfire, especially if most listeners in the room are quite aware that the delegation in question
consists of only that one person, and the speaker says something like “My delegation is of the view that wewould prefer to wait until after lunch to speak on this issue.”)
These examples of importance and self-importance, however, appear to be becoming more infrequent.
There is currently less pomposity than what was evident in earlier UN Crime Programme meetings. This
presumably is related to the fact that most of the participants are representatives of the permanent missions
based in Vienna, and have generally worked with one another for many years. After such a long time, howoften can one repeat the same phrases to the same audience?
6.3. Take a crash course in haggling
The UN Crime Programme deals with a large variety of issues, on many of which there are considerable
differences of opinion as to what, exactly, should be done: cybercrime, assisting victims, the role of civilsociety, whether or not to include references to human rights in draft resolutions being negotiated within theframework of the Crime Programme, and so on. Different individuals and different countries have different
experiences with crime prevention and criminal justice, and thus they have different priorities. Some countries
have a strong practical or political reason to address the issue of trafficking in cultural property; others do
not. Some countries want to involve non-governmental organizations more actively in the national and inparticular in the international response to crime; others do not.
The UN Crime Programme follows what is known as the “spirit of Vienna”, which calls for consensus on
all issues, without the taking of a vote. The chairperson seeks throughout the process to ensure that all thedelegations agree on the formulations used in draft resolutions or the report of the meeting. Because of theintense nature of the negotiations, and because a large proportion of the negotiators are career diplomats
who do not have personal practical or academic experience in criminal justice or international co-operation,arguments based on criminology or criminal justice at times seem to have limited value, and more weight is
48

Thomas Mathiesen, FN-kongress som kulturfenomen (“UN Congresses as cultural phenomena”), Nordisk Tidsskrift for
Kriminalvidenskab, Oslo, vol. 73, no. 2 (April 1986), pp. 157 – 160.
The other three norms he listed were the “politeness norm”, the “consensus norm” (agreement is sought on all points) andthe “my country norm” (in the experience of Mathiesen, each delegation seems to be trying to avoid any agreement that might
result in the member state it represents having to change its national policy and legislation).

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placed on political and national priorities.49
That is not to say that substantive arguments are not made; indeed, they often are. Especially the larger
delegations may have participants with extensive practical or academic experience who can readily explain
why certain formulations suggested by others simply would not work in practice, or would have significant
drawbacks. Yet other delegations may have participants who can quickly direct a logical mind at even the
more obtuse questions and outline the key issues so that these can be better understood by all.
However, the stilted nature of the negotiations at times makes rational discourse difficult at best. With
over 100 member states attending some of the UN Crime Programme meetings, the floor needs to be given
in turn to each and all who have requested permission to speak. If the participant from country A happens
to disagree with a participant from country B, it can often take many interventions before he or she can get
the floor back and reply, by which time the focus of the discussion may already have meandered off tosomething else entirely.
As a result, the more successful negotiators include those who are good at haggling. The following gives
some of the tactics that these inveterate wheeler-dealers appear to follow:• Find out in advance who your main opponents might be, and find out what their interests and goals
are. At times it is necessary to find out why ideas are being opposed, and whether the opponents
would be satisfied either by a minor change of wording, or whether (for example), they might have to
be brought on your side by promising to support some of their own initiatives.
• Be careful of “blind-siders.” With over 100 delegations in attendance, and with the constant turn-overin the participants, it is not enough to simply assume that certain delegations will be on your aside, orat least would not speak out against your proposal. At times, opposition might pop up from a completely
unexpected source. Worse, when one delegation goes on record as being against your proposal, there
is a strong likelihood that subsequent speakers (especially if they come from the same regional group)
would say that they tend to agree with these nay-sayers.
• Work the corridors. Now and then, it is important to enlist as many speakers as possible to go onrecord as being in support of your proposal. This may encourage others to jump on the bandwagon of
support.
• Get the support of key delegations. If such key delegations come out in your support, this can help
considerably to win on the field. Another tactic, especially important in matters with a politicaldimension, is to get the support of delegations from as many different regions as possible.
• Set up positions as bargaining chips (even if they may seem rather extreme) and insist on them as longas necessary. This is an unusual tactic, but also it can be seen to be used now and then. By not showing
your hand too early, it may be possible to appear to be satisfied with a compromise – and yet this“compromise” may be the position that you had wanted to achieve from the outset. (Without thebenefit of ESP, it is difficult to know how often this tactic is used at UN Crime Programme meetings.
However, towards the end of some negotiations over draft resolutions there tend to be more and more
examples of delegations stating that they want an entire paragraph or even section deleted. Often, thisleads to slight amendments of the text of these paragraphs “as a compromise.” perhaps along the linethat the delegations in question had wanted in the first place.)
6.4. Be prepared
The old Boy Scout motto of “Be Prepared” serves many delegations in good stead in negotiations. For
example, the drafting of resolutions may require familiarity with past or ongoing work in other parts of theUnited Nations system, for example in Geneva or New York. The drafting of resolutions may also requirefamiliarity with previous UN Crime Congress Declarations, with key ECOSOC or General Assembly
resolutions, or with resolutions by a session of one of the Conferences of States Parties. When some delegations
try to invent new refinements or terminology, or delete tried-but-true wording, others may jump in and pointout that the phrasing in question is based on a key text, and ask for justification for making any changes.
49This development can be seen to be related to the strengthening tendency to see crime and criminal justice as national
security issues. While it is true that academics and practitioners represent a great variety of approaches, they can be said tohave a greater tendency to see crime and criminal justice as social (or economic, or medical) issues.

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FEATURED ARTICLE“Being prepared” also applies to the giving of statements. It is helpful to work out in advance what points
you want to make in a statement, how to make them, and how to justify your position. However, you should
remain open to adjusting your remarks, depending on how the discussions go. One good method is to weave
in points made by speakers before you. This can gratify those earlier speakers (making them more likely tosupport your own position), and it also conveys the impression to the audience that other member state
representatives think in the same way as you do.
If you do have a prepared statement, it is advisable to provide this in advance to the Secretariat, so thatthey can convey it to the interpreters. (Also, don’t rush too quickly through your written statement, or elsethe interpreters – even the excellent ones at UN meetings – may have difficulties keeping up with you.)
6.5. Learn English
The United Nations has six working languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish).
All official documentation has to be translated into these languages, and the sessions at the UN benefit fromexcellent simultaneous interpretation. Nonetheless, in practice, English is the dominant language. Most of theparticipants based in Vienna are able to read English-language proposals, and can fluently discuss questionsof drafting in English. In addition, and with the exception of the Latin American and Caribbean group, where
the dominant language is Spanish, most of the regional groups rely on English as their lingua franca. And
when informal negotiations are held or lobbying is carried out across regional divides, this tends to be done
in English.
Most importantly, English dominates drafting. Although many representatives can speak in several of theother UN working languages, the discussion over a turn of the phrase is almost inevitably in English.
6.6. Learn and use certain stock phrases and “agreed language”
In accordance with the “consensus norm” identified by Mathiesen, delegations which disagree on certain
points tend to be pressured by the chairperson to find language suitable to all. On the other hand, delegations
applying the “my-country norm” identified by Mathiesen tend to try to avoid accepting any wording thatwould force them to change their domestic law or practice or, more importantly, to go against their strong
views on how international criminal policy should be conducted. If delegations in the minority fail to blockwording with which they disagree, they may fall back on a set of defensive ploys, all of which involve
inserting certain stock phrases that weaken the nature of the obligation, or even emasculate it entirely.
The first such ploy is to replace the phrase “states shall ...” (which implies an obligation) with the much
weaker “states may ...” or even “states may consider ...”. Other formulations along the same line include theexhortatory but non-binding “states are called upon ...” and “states are encouraged to ...”. One more phrase,“states shall consider ...” may seem binding at first glance, but ultimately all that it requires is that statesconsider something. What steps they actually take is left entirely to their discretion.
The second ploy is to insert a condition: states are required to undertake certain measures, but only forexample those that “may be necessary, consistent with its legal principles” or “to the extent appropriate andconsistent with its legal system.” Even the insertion of the simple phrase “where appropriate” leaves eachstate with a margin of appreciation in deciding how to implement the resolution in question.
The third ploy is to subject everything to domestic law. It is, of course, understood that different legal
systems require different measures for implementation. For example, in some countries the police carry out
measures which, elsewhere, are carried out by investigating magistrates, or the courts. Furthermore, forexample Continental law countries rely primarily on statutory law, while common law countries continue toplace considerable weight on court practice. Finally, different legal systems used different concepts.
Accordingly, now and then a paragraph may be inserted in a draft resolution obliging states to do something“in conformity with fundamental principles of its domestic law.”

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In the drafting of resolutions in Vienna, at times a delegation may seek to insert a somewhat modified
version of this phrase, “subject to the fundamental principles of its domestic law.” The difference at first
seemed innocuous. However, when there is an obligation to do something “in conformity” with domestic law,
the obligation to do something remains; domestic law only governs how it is done. But if the obligation is to
do something “subject” to domestic law, then, logically, the state is not required to do anything that would
go against its domestic law.
6.7. Learn when form can be more important than substance
All words are not created equal. In the work of UN Crime Programme bodies, it is possible to identify
four categories of words, from the most to the least important: words as such, words in an optional paragraph,words in brackets, and words in a footnote.
When words are left as such in the text of a draft resolution in informal negotiations, the assumption isthat they reflect the general working consensus of the participants. They benefit from the rule of inertia:
unless someone is later able to persuasively argue why these words should be amended or even deleted, they
are allowed to stay in the text, all the way through to final adoption.50
If the representative of a state is not satisfied with a formulation in general, he or she may suggest acompletely different formulation or an entirely new paragraph as an “option.” Much of the work in informal
negotiations is spent on trying to eliminate the options, so that just one text remains. Thus, options exist on
sufferance. It is the survival of the fittest, with the duelling options brandishing pistols at twenty paces.
When brackets are used, they denote words or entire phrases that had been questioned by one or severaldelegations. These delegations may disagree with the entire purpose of the words or phrase, or they may
simply feel uncomfortable with the wording. Again, considerable time can be spent on debating whether or
not the brackets can be “lifted.” (This phrase may give rise to considerable confusion. At times, delegations
may say that they want the brackets deleted. The chairperson would usually then have to ascertain whether
it is only the brackets themselves that are to be deleted – in which case the words would remain in the text
– or whether it is the words in the brackets that these delegations want to be deleted.)
Words in a footnote lived an even more tenuous existence. (This category does not appear very often inpractice.) Every now and then, a country or group of countries may strongly disagree with the view of the
majority. For them, it is often important to have their views clearly reflected in the drafting, even in afootnote, so that when the matter comes up again, the reason for their disagreement would be clear, and in
the meantime, they may have succeeded in getting more allies. However, once words have been demoted toa footnote, it usually proves very difficult to get them back into the text.
6.8. Drink lots of melange and forget about your social life
Vienna is a city well known for its great variety of excellent coffee. The coffee bars outside the meetingrooms at the Vienna International Centre serve quite a few of these varieties, but it seems to be melangethat is the drink of choice for many participants. Filling oneself with caffeine proves to be a good tactic fora variety of reasons. First, it helps to keep the participants awake during the long sessions; at times, listening
to delegations raise the same points, over and over again, can become mind-numbing. The participants must,
nonetheless, stay on their toes. The chairperson may seek at various stages to push things along by moving
on to the next paragraph in the negotiations, and asking if there are any comments. If no participant raises
50

A further distinction can be made between words in an “operative paragraph” of a draft resolution, and words in a“preambular paragraph.” The operative paragraphs are regarded as the most important part of a resolution, since they
lay out policy or establish mandates. The preambular paragraphs in general give the context of the draft resolution: concern
over certain developments (such as the increase in certain forms of crime), pleasure over certain other developments (suchas meetings held, or decisions taken), and what key resolutions have previously been adopted on the subject. Now and then,a contentious issue may be shifted, with appropriate rewording, from the draft operative paragraphs into the preamble of thedraft resolution, thus in effect giving it less political weight.

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his or her country's nameplate, the paragraph may be gavelled,51 and the chairperson proceeds to the next
point. Anyone who tries to reopen a gavelled paragraph could be subjected to considerable peer pressure.
But melange also has other functions. Coffee breaks are used for informal consultations and for lobbying.
When a particularly difficult point arises, the chairperson might ask the key delegations to step outside andcome back with an acceptable formulation. If the issue proves to be very vexatious, the chairperson mighteven declare a “15-minute coffee break” for informal negotiations, and the time is used – often quite successfully– to lobby for support for whatever proposals are on the floor.
In general, the pace of the negotiations in Vienna can be deceptively slow. Sessions usually do not begin
on time, and fifteen-minute coffee breaks may last half an hour or longer. As one ambassador warned
participants towards the end of one long session in Vienna, “forget about your social life.” Evenings tend tobe free for most participants, but especially on the third and fourth day of one-week meetings, some informal
discussions continue until late at night.52
6.9. Either bring colleagues or learn how to be in two places at the same time
Although the work at UN Crime Programme meetings formally takes place in one and the same room,delegations with only one participant may soon find themselves in difficulties. In addition to the formal
meetings and the informal negotiations (several of which may be going on at the same time), many regionalgroups are convened throughout the meetings to review developments, discuss proposals and plan strategy.
The two-hour lunch breaks are often filled with drafting meetings or at least informal discussions.
As a result, key members of delegations (and especially the members of the Bureau, i.e. the chairperson,
the vice chairpersons and the rapporteur) may soon find themselves overworked. When dealing with one
matter, they may quite now and then be interrupted by someone tugging on their sleeve, saying that they
are supposed to be addressing another topic somewhere else.
6.10. Develop a sense of humour
The final lesson is an elective one, not a requirement. A sense of humour makes surviving meetings at
the UN Crime Programme easier.
Humour can also be used deliberately at UN Crime Programme meetings. Humour may come in handy
at times to defuse a tense atmosphere. Some of the more successful and respected chairpersons resort to it
now and then, at times cajoling participants to agree, good-humouredly dangling the promise of a coffee
break before them. One of the masters at this is Ambassador Luigi Lauriola, who chaired the very difficult
negotiations on the UNTOC Convention with grace and patience. When told by a national representative thathe seemed to have strong views on a sensitive issue at hand, he immediately replied that he may be strong,but has no views; at another tense time, he closed his statement by noting that he was “your obedientservant” – but then added in an audible stage whisper caught by the microphone, “almost.”

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The chairperson bangs the gavel to denote that the meeting has accepting the wording in question.
The Secretariat generally has to work not only the hours during which the participants are meeting formally or informally,
but late into the night, checking and rechecking the texts and ensuring translation, editing and dissemination for the nextmorning.

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RESOURCE MATERIAL SERIES No. 114

7. Legends in the UN Crime Programme
Legends in the UN Crime Programme
Individuals who have made a difference
Inkeri Anttila
Bridge-builder for humane criminal policy
William (“Bill”) Clifford
Practitioner, reformer, humanist
Ronald Gainer and Vasily Ignatov
Architects of the restructuring of the Programme
Manuel Lopez-Rey
Developer of the theory of social defence
Irene Melup
Tireless defender of the vulnerable
Gerhard Mueller
Respected teacher and organizer
Minoru Shikita
Model diplomat and Chief
Eduardo Vetere
The energy in the UN Crime Programme
Dimitri Vlassis
The maestro behind the scenes

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