Director General/Executive Director
Excellencies
Dear colleagues,
Thank you for the opportunity to join you remotely for this quarterly briefing.
As the UN Secretariat body mandated to provide legislative assistance, criminal justice capacity building and support for judicial and law enforcement cooperation, UNODC welcomes the greater coherence that we have achieved through the Compact with USG Voronkov and his Office, CTED and other partners.
This is a concrete result of the Secretary-General's leadership to strengthen our One-UN approach.
The Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact provides a clear framework and solid platform for action.
UNODC delivers seventy percent of the UN projects under the UN Global CT Strategy's Pillar Three on capacity building.
We provide this support through our network of crime and counter-terrorism experts located in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Our Office continues to tailor assistance to maximize effectiveness and contribute to broader UN efforts to prevent conflict, build peace and implement the Sustainable Development Goals.
In line with UN-wide reforms, UNODC is committed to working closely with other UN entities and especially with UN country teams.
We are pleased to report a clear increase in joint technical assistance planning and delivery this year.
With OCT alone, we mobilized several million dollars for multi-year terrorism prevention initiatives addressing management of violent extremist prisoners, suppressing nuclear terrorism and use of passenger data.
These projects are being co-implemented by UNODC, OCT, UNDP, ICAO and other partners.
I will briefly mention a few additional examples of UNODC's work this year.
Our Office launched a task force for judicial cooperation in cases involving foreign terrorist fighters in the Middle East and North Africa region.
Airport task forces established through the UNODC-INTERPOL-WCO project have successfully intercepted several foreign terrorist fighters travelling in the Sahel and the Caribbean, and we are partnering with INTERPOL to improve terrorist interdiction in Asia.
Working with CTED and the International Association of Prosecutors, UNODC produced a guide on the collection and use of electronic evidence in cross-border counter-terrorism investigations, and we will soon start delivering training to pilot countries.
Our Office will be presenting first UN manual on gender dimensions in counter-terrorism during the first quarter of 2019.
In cooperation with UNITAD, we continue supporting Iraq to hold ISIL accountable for their crimes.
With CTED, we have been training prosecutors and judges on handling terrorism cases in the Lake Chad Basin Region.
In October, I signed with Mr. Voronkov a Strategic Partnership Agreement, and we have co-funded a Special Advisor to put this strengthened UNODC-OCT partnership into action.
In the coming year, UNODC will also focus on suppressing terrorism financing, addressing the terrorism-transnational organized crime nexus, and managing challenges related to children recruited and exploited by terrorist groups.
A key priority we hope to address with your support is increasing efficiency in collecting evidence, particularly from conflict zones, and converting intelligence into admissible evidence to bring terrorists to justice.
To that end, we are working with CTED to build cooperation between the military and law enforcement, under the inter-agency group on legal and criminal justice responses to terrorism co-chaired by UNODC and CTED.
UNODC also chairs with OCT the inter-agency group on countering the financing of terrorism, which will focus on promoting terrorism financing risk assessments, with CTED, and the use of financial intelligence, with IMF.
Allow me to conclude by thanking OCT and all of our partners. I am grateful for the support UNODC receives from Member States to provide effective, integrated assistance to counter crime and terrorism threats.
We look forward to further strengthening our work with you in the New Year.
Thank you.