Vienna (Austria), 18 January 2023 –The critical and invaluable role of civil society, academia and the private sector was emphasized during the hybrid side event “Strengthening Multi-Stakeholder Participation in the Ad-Hoc Committee on Cybercrime Negotiations”. The event was organised by the UNODC Civil Society Unit together with the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (Alliance) in the margins of the Fourth Session of the Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes taking place from 9-20 January 2023 in Vienna.
Following up on the Civil Society Briefing and Needs Assessment held in December 2022, the event aimed to further explore how to strengthen meaningful multi-stakeholder participation and presented suggestions from a range of international and regional civil society organisations. The meeting was co-moderated by Anders Frantzen, UNODC Civil Society Unit and Ian Tennant, NGO Alliance on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.
Pavlina Pavlova from the CyberPeace Institute presented a global perspective on civil society engagement in the ongoing negotiations. ‘Stakeholders not only need a voice but also need to see that their voices are being listened to,’ - highlighted Ms. Pavlova, explaining that civil society actors look for predictability and clarity when engaging in UN processes to best manage limited capacities for engagement. The viewpoints of private sector organisations were represented by Timea Sutto from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). Ms. Sutto mentioned that private companies consider it important to influence proceedings at the AHC because they face cybercrime challenges on a daily basis and see the need to collaborate more closely with other stakeholders to tackle such crimes. She also drew the attention to the need to share information with, and explain processes to smaller organisations and companies, who often don’t have much experience with engaging in multilateral processes.
Regional and local perspectives on civil society engagement were presented by Elizabeth Mendoza from Hiperderecho, Peru and Tariq Khosa from the Center for Governance Research Pakistan. They shared their views on issues that are important to civil society in their regions and highlighted the need to protect human rights, and to include gender perspectives in the negotiations. Both speakers highlighted that the collective voice of NGOs can make valuable inputs to the ongoing negotiations.
The event was concluded with an interesting Q&A session where participants addressed burning and relevant issues. Participants and speakers commended the Ad Hoc Committee for fostering inclusive multi-stakeholder participation, highlighting the prompt and comprehensive sharing of information and noted that the multi-stakeholder processes need to involve a wide range of organisations, companies, and academic institutions to ensure broad, and diverse engagement. Going forward, speakers suggested to form strong stakeholder alliances and invited Member States to engage more with national stakeholders at home.
