UNODC Eastern Africa News and Stories

You are here: Home / News

UNODC SUPPORTS ICCS NATIONAL WORKSHOPS IN KENYA AND UGANDA

Kampala, 30 May 2018 - The UNODC Regional Office for East Africa recently supported two national workshops on the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS). The first workshop, which was jointly organized by the UNODC and the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), was held in Machakos, Kenya, from 24 to 25 May 2018. Whereas, the second workshop, which was jointly organized by the UNODC, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) and the Secretariat of the Uganda's Justice Law and Order Sector (JLOS), was held in Kampala, Uganda, from 28 to 29 May 2018.

The ICCS was endorsed in 2015 by the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) and the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) as an international statistical standard for data collection. The ICCS's primary unit is the act or omission that constitutes a criminal offence rather than legal provisions and as a result it cuts across the different definitions found in national penal codes. It is, therefore, the first common framework to group all kinds of criminal offences into categories that are useful for producing global crime statistics.

In the same way, the ICCS can serve as a tool to improve the consistency of data across criminal justice institutions (such as police, prosecution offices, courts, or prisons) at a national level as well as supporting efforts to monitor the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets in the areas of public security and safety, human trafficking, corruption, and access to justice.

After the ICCS's endorsement, Kenya and Uganda volunteered to pilot its implementation in Africa. The implementation process has since been supported by the UNODC technical assistance programme and in consequence the two workshops were joined by a Research Officer from the UNODC Data Development and Dissemination Unit in Vienna.

The workshops were attended by experts from all of the the institutions responsible for the implementation ICCS in Kenya and Uganda (including police, prison authorities, prosecution services and judiciary). During the workshops, the participants were faced with practical exercises on mapping national offences into the International Classification and engaged in discussion on the national 'road maps' towards its implementation.

Further information:

UNODC's International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes

Better Data to Monitor Violence, Trafficking, Corruption and Access to Justice