UNODC and UNESCO announced a new project focussed on educating youth on a culture of lawfulness to provide educational responses to meet some of the world's most pressing rule of law challenges.
The ' Initiative on Global Citizenship Education: Educating for a Culture of Lawfulness' is developed jointly by UNODC and UNESCO with the aim of equipping primary and secondary level educators with tools to uphold the principles of human rights and democracy, as well as to preserve and strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law.
Model UN is an academic simulation of the United Nations, where students play the role of delegates from different countries and attempt to solve real world issues, using the policies and perspectives of their assigned country. For the first time, simulations on issues such as corruption, human trafficking and cybercrime, and addressing their related Sustainable Development Goals, have become more easily accessible, with UNODC's launch of its own resource guide. The first of its kind within the United Nations family, the "Resource Guide for Organizing Model United Nations Conferences that Address Crime Prevention, Criminal Justice and Other Aspects of the Rule of Law" is accessible online available for download.
Amid the spread of globalization and increasing transnational flows, organized crime has generated significant interest in academic, policy and law enforcement circles. Yet despite their visibility and the abundance of literature on their activities and structures, organized criminal groups also constitute a contentious focus of research.
In order to address gaps, to display innovative global and critical research on organized crime, and to contribute to the crafting of legal and policy reform on crime, the Education for Justice initiative and the the European University Institute (EUI) will convene an International Academic Conference on the gender and gendered dynamics of organized crime. A call for abstracts is now open until 9 March 2018.
Parents and teachers of young children facing a connected world have their hands full trying to protect them from potential dangers lurking around every digital corner, especially with so many apps aimed at their age group. Despite children's growing technological savvy and awareness of potential problems with certain activities, abusers are also becoming more adept at finding ways to entice children to do things they do not want to do, or things they do not know can hurt them.
A safer Internet at every level is one of the goals of UNODC's work in countering cybercrime. The Education for Justice (E4J) initiative and its commitment to children's education has inspired new partnerships with dedicated organizations to further raise awareness of online risk.
Discussions around branding, marketing and points of sale are not often associated with the United Nations family, but they were a large part of the latest expert group meeting convened in Vienna in late-January to explore UNODC's options for supporting a global scheme of prison products, made by prisoners in the context of rehabilitation programmes.
An essential component of the Doha Declaration Global Programme, UNODC's work on prisoner rehabilitation has been consolidating the ways in which prison-based rehabilitation schemes can be developed and harmonized at an international level. The consideration of a "global prison brand," or of a similar scheme to promote existing brands of prison products at national level, is the next step in the programme, and was the focal point of the meeting.
