Statement to the opening session of the
International Congress in Pursuit of a Drug-Free ASEAN 2015:
Sharing the vision, leading the change
Pino Arlacchi
Under-Secretary-General
Executive Director
Bangkok
11 October 2000
Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to begin by extending my thanks to the Royal Thai Government and to ASEAN for joining with us in organizing this milestone event. Not too many years ago, the idea of a drug-free South East Asia would have provoked disbelief. Today you have come together to set in motion a process to achieve this objective in fifteen years.
There has been impressive progress already in reducing illicit cultivation, with complete success in some countries. Yet the region remains the second largest source of illicit opiates in the world. Heroin trafficking and consumption remain serious problems in the region and injecting drug use has been one of the major vectors for the rapid spread of the HIV infection. In recent years the problem of amphetamine-type stimulants has also taken on alarming proportions.
Achieving a drug-free ASEAN will not be easy, but in honouring the commitment made at the 1998 UN General Assembly special session on drugs, you are stating your determination to succeed. Your success will make an important contribution to human security in this region.
In looking at the question of human security, we see an important change. When the United Nations was founded in the middle of the 1900s, coming out of the Second World War, the world's security concerns centered on the need to prevent war between countries. That is now almost a relic of a past age.
Today's conflicts involve interest groups within states, sometimes acting against other groups, sometimes acting against the state. Conflicts which cross borders tend to be overflows from these local conflicts.
The conflicts often involve groups based on ethnic or religious identity which has taken on a political dimension. The state very often finds itself on the defensive. It can become difficult for the state to ensure basic human security against these non-traditional threats.
In traditional conflicts involving national armies, the state financed the war. Conflicts involving non-state groups must seek funding elsewhere. Their own constituents are unlikely to have the wealth needed to support them. Various forms of crime offer ready sources of funds to buy arms and to feed the fighters.
Drug trafficking has for many years been a source of illicit funding for various criminal groups. Those groups wishing to challenge the authority of the state saw the advantages it offered and lost no time in establishing their links with the drug business. It is a high-profit business, with a tradition of cash transactions that are difficult to trace.
This particular link has been especially common in parts of the world near the sources of illicit drugs. The groups pursuing a conflict sometimes become drug traffickers themselves. It is in the traffic - not the cultivation - that the large profits are made. Profit margins for the poppy farmer are minimal. His goal is to feed his family and send his children to school.
This was the region where the UN undertook its first work in alternative development, right here in Thailand in 1971. The successful experience in South East Asia served as a model for our work in other countries.
This region has also been the pioneer in other aspects of drug control. Particularly important has been the Memorandum of Understanding or MOU approach to subregional cooperation. The Drug Control MOU in which six countries of the region have joined with UNDCP in cooperative efforts has served as a model for other regions. You will hear more about drug control in the region from the speakers who follow.
Drugs are by no means the only commodity used to finance conflicts. Diversion of diamonds and other natural resources from legitimate commerce is a main source of funding for groups operating in Angola and Sierra Leone. The BBC reports that 300 thousand illegal diamond prospectors operate in the east of Angola. They earn 300 million dollars per year from their illegal trade. This money not only supports the arms purchases needed to continue what is one of the world's longest conflicts. It also deprives the legitimate government of a major source of tax revenue to assist in developing the society and economy.
The fastest-growing form of trafficking involves human cargo. It is also the most tragic in its consequences. We are facing a modern form of slavery that affects nearly the entire world. Some 4 million people are trafficked by criminal groups every year. The earnings for the criminals now reach 5 to 7 billion dollars.
Modern slavery takes many forms. This region struggles to control slavery practices in the sex industry. Women and children are purchased in rural areas for work as prostitutes in the cities or abroad. Similar situations exist elsewhere. Some 200 thousand women and girls from Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are sold into sexual exploitation each year in Western Europe. Other sources can be found in Africa and Latin America. Worldwide, an estimated 700 thousand to 1 million women and children are shipped across national boundaries each year and sold into slavery-like practices.
Other forms of modern slavery involve forced labour in sweatshops or as domestic workers under debt-bondage arrangements. Victims think they are being recruited for a better life abroad. Their dream of a better life turns into a nightmare.
The traffic in human cargo may not at first appear to be a threat to security. The link, as in drug trafficking, is the money. Profits are so high that some drug traffickers are reported to be switching cargos from heroin to humans. This degree of money in the hand of criminal groups can undermine legitimate authority.
In today's global economy, economic crime has taken on enormous importance. Criminals take advantage of electronic banking. A leading company specializing in secure messaging for financial institutions reports that it handled one hundred ninety-five million messages in the first two months of this year. On one day in February the traffic was five and a half million messages. A single illegal transaction is difficult to trace in this mass of legal transactions.
Last year's money laundering case between banks in Moscow and New York is now legendary, involving an estimated 7 billion dollars in criminal proceeds. That is equivalent to two-and-a-half per cent of the entire 1998 GDP of Russia. It is more than the GDP of around one-third of the Member States of the UN. These enormous sums can be the proceeds from corruption, fraud, trafficking or other crime. With such amounts of money at their disposal, criminal groups can destabilize entire states.
The key to understanding the non-traditional threats to human security is straightforward. Conflicts that had previously been largely political in nature have now been criminalized.
But this is not enough to explain the real nature of the threat posed. When power transfers to criminal groups - in this case economic power , arms and even political power - the state is weakened. Corruption flourishes. In extreme cases, like we have in several African countries, the state collapses altogether.
Each increase in power by criminally tied groups erodes the rule of law. The authority and credibility of the state decline. It is worth recalling that the rule of law is a compact between the people and the state. When the people can no longer depend on the state to guarantee their security and an acceptable degree of fairness in day-to-day life, they are obliged to turn elsewhere. This offers yet another opportunity for criminal groups to step in and replace government.
We often underestimate the importance of corruption as a force that undermines the legitimacy of the state. For example, a justice system that requires bribes to administer justice is no justice system. It is guaranteeing that justice is provided only to those who have enough money to pay for it.
The world is reacting to these criminalized threats to human security. In December the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime will be signed in the Sicilian city of Palermo, the traditional base of the Italian mafia. This new instrument will be a major step in turning the tide against cross-border crime. In today's globalized economy and society, local solutions are no longer enough. The Palermo Convention establishes the basis for cooperation between countries. It also includes provisions for technical assistance to developing countries which need help to meet the requirements of the Convention. Three protocols to the Convention address the smuggling and trafficking in human beings and the arms traffic.
Other initiatives at the international level include three global programmes operated by the Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention
(ODCCP). The first of these seeks to develop a better understanding of the nature and extent of organized crime around the world. This knowledge is essential if we are to design effective counter-measures.
A second global programme will lead to an international strategy against trafficking in human beings. It is examining the flows of this traffic and setting up and evaluate demonstration projects to identify which types of approaches are needed in the international strategy.
A third global programme addresses corruption. With ODCCP assistance, participating countries assess their existing anti-corruption measures, prepare any needed institutional or legislative changes, develop corruption prevention strategies and train officials and representatives of the private sector in their application.
These three fairly new global programmes add to the existing global programme against money laundering and to our many programmes dealing with drug supply, traffic and addiction. I look forward to the same degree of cooperation with this region in the new programmes that we have had over the years in the drug control field.
Regional initiatives are a very important component of the global effort against drugs and crime, and I congratulate ASEAN on its many years of valuable work in the drug control field. While I am here in Bangkok, I will reach an agreement with the ASEAN Secretariat on a Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation against transnational organized crime and drug control. In creating ODCCP, Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared that our task is to fight the uncivil society. By joining forces with us, ASEAN pledges to do the same in this region.
The campaign for a Drug-Free ASEAN is one of the major components in addressing the uncivil society. It is especially important in this region, which remains the a major source of illicit opiates, with related trafficking and abuse. In addition, the region faces the challenge of stimulant trafficking and abuse. The ATS phenomenon is in several ways different from other drug problems. It will need innovative strategies. This conference is an important step towards defining those strategies.
Achieving a drug-free ASEAN will be a difficult task. But it will be worth all the effort that is put into it.
I pledge to you the full cooperation and support of ODCCP.