Not a day passes without stories of organized crime making their way to the front pages of newspapers around the world. Despite copious legislation and strong law enforcement measures in most countries, criminal groups find ways to operate outside the rule of law across borders, causing immense physical, psychological, and financial damage to their victims.
Governments have since long joined efforts in combatting organized crime even as it continues to become more emboldened. With the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC), signed in Palermo, Italy in 2000, they devised an international instrument enabling their collective fight against transnational organized crime.
This side event celebrates the 20 th anniversary of the signing of the UNTOC and builds on that legacy by showcasing how education, particularly through lifelong learning opportunities, can empower youth and adults to address transnational organized crime.
Examples of good practices for the conceptualization, design and dissemination of educational tools on transnational organized crime at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels will be presented, igniting fruitful discussions and exchanges of views on the importance of quality education to promote and uphold the rule of law, with a particular focus on organized crime.
24 September 2020 - The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the education and social sectors' efforts to ensure broad access to learning. In response to this situation, UNODC's Education for Justice (E4J) initiative and the Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa (ROMENA) held a regional creative reading competition aimed at actively engaging education and social work professionals, students and youth in community-based activities, which focused on innovative ways to enable children to have learning experiences and to deliver educational messages. To participate in the competition, children and youth produced videos and creative content reflecting the "Do It Like The Zorbs" story in their own way while learning about the values of respect, tolerance, integrity, justice and fairness.
A joint UNESCO-UNODC partnership working to promote the rule of law through education is launching a series of virtual regional dialogues to bring young people together with policymakers to hear what they want from education and justice systems in the post COVID-19 future.
The dialogues will focus on Central America, South Asia and Europe and the Middle East and North Africa and will seize the opportunity for change offered by the pandemic to build discussion among young people, policy-makers, educators and representatives from education and justice sectors to engage them in building back better.
Worldwide, schooling in 2020 has been marked by unprecedented interruptions to children's learning and teacher's efforts to educate. With COVID-19 first leading to school closures, and later to social distancing measures, the pandemic has forced educational systems to adapt and develop new ways of learning, as well as identify solutions to mobilize youth remotely. In West Africa, where the COVID-19 reaction measures reflect much of the rest of the world, one of the ways this is now being achieved is through the region's first educational television station, Télé-Ecole, with whom UNODC recently partnered.
