Director-General/Executive Director
Your Excellency, Minister Le Hoai Trung,
Your Excellency Ambassador Do Hung Viet,
Distinguished Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am very pleased to join you today, from Vienna to New York, to talk about the new UN Cybercrime Convention.
This Convention is a product of determined diplomacy across both of these homes of multilateralism.
It took more than 420 hours of formal negotiations in Vienna and in New York, and hundreds more hours of informal negotiations involving capitals around the world, to produce the first UN criminal justice convention in over 20 years.
The process also included the voices of more than 150 stakeholders from civil society, academia, international organizations, and the private sector.
Overcoming great technical and political odds, the Convention was adopted here in New York in December of last year, without a vote.
As we approach the signing conference that will take place on October 25 and 26 in Hanoi, we must now translate that landmark diplomatic achievement into positive impact for communities around the world.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime is proud to partner with Viet Nam in hosting today’s event and in preparing for the signing conference.
Excellencies,
The dangers of cybercrime are evident all around us, and they are growing by the day.
With the power packed inside a few millimeters of silicon, criminals can generate and disseminate material in seconds, communicate and trade in the shadows, falsify documents, impersonate people, and much more.
In this underworld, laws and national borders are obsolete. Everyone is a viable target. And every target is within reach.
Tech-dependent crimes are evolving exponentially, while crimes like trafficking, terrorism and corruption are being re-shaped by new tech.
International cooperation on cybercrime has never been more critical.
The new Convention is not merely relevant because it addresses a growing global threat. It is relevant because of what it presents and how we can utilize it.
Firstly, the Convention fills an urgent gap in a swiftly growing cybercrime landscape.
It contains groundbreaking provisions on the use of electronic evidence, a pathway to eliminate criminal safe havens, and clearly defined offenses for the most prevalent cybercrimes.
These include crimes which are rapidly expanding in scale, such as cyber fraud and online child sexual exploitation.
Secondly, the new Convention is designed to be futureproof.
While it directly addresses the most pressing threats of today, the Convention also accounts for the challenges of tomorrow, by adopting technology-neutral language that focuses on criminal conduct rather than specific tech.
As cybercrime continues to evolve, the global response can evolve with it.
And thirdly, the new Convention is practical and actionable.
It empowers States Parties to strengthen investigations into serious crimes; it creates new avenues for international judicial and law enforcement cooperation; and it provides for technical assistance and capacity-building measures.
And here I want to note that the Convention integrates seamlessly with existing regional frameworks and is fully in line with international human rights law.
Excellencies,
The new Convention is a leap forward and a powerful launching pad for a more effective global response to cybercrime.
So where do we go from here?
First and foremost, the signing conference in Hanoi will be a pivotal moment.
It will be an opportunity for countries to show real commitment by participating and by signing the Convention.
The wider the pool of countries stepping in, the stronger the message on cybercrime as a priority, and on multilateralism as a path forward.
And here I want to thank and commend the government of Viet Nam for their leadership on global cybercrime responses and for hosting the conference.
The efforts and resources invested by Viet Nam to ensure a successful conference are admirable, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime is proud to work with them on this ambitious endeavour.
And the signature conference is only the first step. After signature, we must set our sights on ratification, entry into force, and implementation.
UNODC has been entrusted with supporting this process and assisting countries who wish to accede to the Convention.
Our Global Progamme on Cybercrime already boasts more than a decade of experience supporting responses to counter and prevent cyber-related crime in more than 60 countries around the world.
We have already trained thousands of practitioners on topics such as digital forensics, investigation, and international legal cooperation.
UNODC is well equipped to provide legislative and technical assistance in support of the new convention, and we have developed a ratification methodology to ensure a consistent and coherent approach, taking into account different legal systems and capabilities.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The UN Cybercrime Convention presents a golden opportunity to prevent criminal actors from coopting progress and propagating harm, and to bring criminal justice responses up to speed with new tech.
I hope that you will seize this opportunity and join the new Convention, for a safer digital future for all.
Thank you.
