Director General/Executive Director
Dear Mr. Titov,
Your Highness,
Excellencies,
Distinguished participants,
I am very glad to be with you today to address this topic, which touches on a very important area of our work at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, carried out in partnership with DPKO.
The international community has come a long way from the traditional "phased" approach, where development actors typically started working once a peace operation had been concluded, and where work on supporting justice and corrections often comes in long after support to the police and other institutions.
We know that justice and corrections are essential for restoring and rebuilding peace and security throughout a peace operation.
Firstly, at the initial stage, it is important to restore law and order. Efforts to re-establish basic police presence, either through UNPOL or by strengthening national police, need to be followed closely by efforts to re-open courts, as well as assess and improve prison and detention conditions.
To do so, justice and corrections institutions need to be equipped with adequate staff and tools based on international minimum standards. UNODC has worked closely with DPKO on developing a number of such tools, including, most recently, the Prison Evaluation Checklist for Post-Conflict Settings.
This tool can be used not only to help set a baseline for assessing the situation in prisons at the beginning of a peace operation but also to facilitate the periodic evaluation of such systems in post-conflict settings.
Secondly, justice and corrections components are essential to re-establish the rule of law and support national capacity building.
Again, the importance of supporting all aspects of the criminal justice system, including prison and probation services to prevent further human rights abuses, cannot be overstated.
UNODC and other agencies have worked together with DPKO, for example in South Sudan, Somalia and West Africa, to support national capacity building in such phases of peace operations, including through assisting national efforts to respond to complex threats such as organized crime, terrorism and corruption. .
Finally, a proper planning and transition plan that takes into account the rule of law, justice and corrections needs to be developed and implemented before mission draw-down. We are currently in the process of carrying out such work in Burundi and Liberia.
In particular, it is important to ensure that any assistance provided will be continued by another partner, or that national institutions can sustain themselves.
UNODC implements comprehensive prison reform programmes in a number of countries, and may have added value to bring to the table in terms of assisting national counterparts in sustainable institutional reforms.
Looking ahead, it is essential that we intensify efforts to strengthen coordination, not only between UN agencies but also with bilateral and other actors.
Joint planning and programmes currently being developed and implemented by DPKO, UNDP, UNODC, OHCHR and UNWOMEN under the Global Focal Point (GFP) are providing new knowledge and experience that could inform future action.
This includes work in the DRC, Somalia, Haiti, Libya and Myanmar.
UNODC, as always, stands ready to support our common efforts.
I would like to conclude with a thought for all UN colleagues lost in the line of duty in peacekeeping and other operations.
Only this month we at UNODC lost two colleagues, Clément Gorrissen and Simon Davis, who were working in Somalia, in an attack by an unidentified gunman in Galkayo airport. May they rest in peace.
Thank you.