Pacific Harbour, 16 July 2024 – The Pacific region faces significant challenges from organized criminal groups, with globalization, rapid digitalization and intensification of trade and connectivity within and beyond the region contributing to the complexity of the threat landscape. Drug trafficking, cyber-enabled and cyber-dependent crime, financial crime, crimes in the fisheries sector and trafficking in persons all feature prominently in the region, and continue to evolve in terms of new forms and modalities.
While there are promising trends of harmonization of responses on the regional level, particularly with the development of a Regional Strategy on Transnational Organized Crime Disruption by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, comprehensive whole-of-society national strategies against organized crime are still lacking in the majority of the Pacific states.
For this reason, the UNODC Global Programme on Implementing the Organized Crime Convention was in Pacific Harbour, Fiji on 1-4 July, to host the first ever back-to-back Regional Multi-stakeholder Meeting on Strategies against Organized Crime & Regional Event on Gender and Human Rights Mainstreaming in Preventing and Combating Organized Crime. The event brought together 18 participants, including national governments and civil society organizations from the Cook Islands, Fiji, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
During the four days, a range of topics related to organized crime, gender and human rights were discussed, including the relevance of the development of national organized crime strategies and the significance of mainstreaming gender and human rights in these efforts. The event included presentations from a range of organizations and civil society organizations, including OHCHR, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, Drug Free World Fiji, PIANGO, Integrity Fiji and the Pacific Council of Churches.
When asked what she enjoyed most about the event, Kalesi Volatabu, founder of Drug Free World Fiji highlighted that she enjoyed:
“Hearing about the experiences of people from all over the region, connecting with our partners, and having a constructive conversation about future plans that we can all work towards implementing throughout the Pacific Regions to combat and prevent organized crime, with a focus on gender equality and human rights”.
By the end of the four days, the workshop participants developed their own ‘mock’ organized crime strategy, which included gender and human rights – sensitive recommendations on protecting those vulnerable to organized crime, preventing organized crime, pursuing organized criminal groups and promoting cooperation to meet these ends.
UNODC wishes to thank the Governments of Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom for their generous support for this event and looks forward to continuing its close cooperation with countries in the Pacific to achieve organized crime responses that are gender and human rights-responsive.
