Banner of Commissions: CND and CCPCJ
8 July 2021 – Addressing the impact of COVID-19 on drugs and crime was in the focus of the side event held on 7 July by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) and the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) during the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.
The online side event was co-organized by the Permanent Mission of Austria to the United Nations in New York.
Dominika Krois, the Chair of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs at its sixty-fourth session, presented on the recent deliberations and activities of the CND that focused on addressing the devastating impact of the pandemic on the world drug problem, including the related Joint Statement adopted by the Commission at its sixty-fourth session. She underscored that building back better “requires a coordinated and joint multilateral response”.
“Efforts to recover from the pandemic should be guided first and foremost by the principle of leaving no one behind,” stressed Alessandro Cortese, Chair of the Crime Commission at its thirtieth session, in his presentation on the CCPCJ response to the COVID-19 implications on crime prevention and criminal justice.
The side event also touched upon the outcome of the Fourteenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, held in March 2021 in Kyoto, Japan – with Takeshi Hikihara, First Vice-Chair of the CCPCJ and Permanent Representative of the Host Country to the Fourteenth Congress, sharing information on how the outcome of the Congress, the Kyoto Declaration, took into account and addressed the COVID-19 impact.
Participants also had the opportunity to gain more insights on the working methods of the two Vienna-based Commissions during the pandemic, through a presentation made by the Secretariat to the Governing Bodies.
