International Day for the Prevention of and Fight against All Forms of Transnational Organized Crime

  The first meeting of this group will take place in Vienna from 30 June to 2 July 2025, and may be followed by a second meeting in early 2026, ahead of the 15th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in the United Arab Emirate s in April. The group will be expected to report on its work at the 13th UNTOC COP in October 2026. This new process is the culmination of a long-brewing movement towards addressing environmental crimes beyond what can be controlled through CITES. For example, it builds on progress made at France’s initiative to push forward resolutions on environmental crime that are within the scope of existing UN instruments. Crucially, in 2022, Resolution 31/1 of the UN Commission of Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) , tabled by Angola, Kenya and Peru called for views on a potential new protocol on wildlife trafficking to be collected (the first time a protocol had been mentioned in a UN resolution). This followed a campaign led by the Globa...

  Analysis from the European Observatories on Child soldiers of Europe: Why is organized crime increasingly recruiting minors? Although the recruitment of minors into organized crime and violence-as-a-service is a relatively new phenomenon in Germany, other European countries have been faced with this issue for some time. The involvement of young people in drug trafficking is a Europe-wide trend, as highlighted in a recent Europol intelligence notification . In France, as part of a pattern of ‘ ultra-juvenilization ’ of crime, minors are frequently enlisted through social media and sent to sell drugs. These so-called ‘ jobbers ’ are said to be considered disposable by the gangs and criminal networks that employ them. Similarly, 65% of those arrested for drug trafficking in Brussels are minors. In the United Kingdom, gangs and networks known as county lines have recruited children as young as seven to act as drug couriers . In Madrid it has been reported that Latin American ...

  Analysis from the Americas Region observatories on llegal mining and gold supply chains in Ecuador . In recent years, Ecuador’s gold sector has transformed dramatically. Once a largely informal livelihood, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has evolved into a criminally exploited industry. This report investigates this transformation and the illicit gold supply chains that are fueling it. Drawing on interviews, fieldwork, and open-source analysis, the report examines how systemic vulnerabilities have enabled organized crime groups (OCGs) to capture sections of the ASGM sector and launder gold and illicit finance into formal supply chains. With limited government oversight, widespread corruption, and a culture of impunity, Ecuador’s gold sector has become a major source of income for OCGs, alongside growing violence, environmental degradation, and financial crime. Let's  focus on the critical gold processing hubs of Zaruma and Portovelo, in El Oro province . Gold e...

  Analysis from the Asia - Asia/Pacific Observatories on Beyond legacy weapons: South East Asia’s illicit arms trade is diversifying. Arms trafficking in South East Asia has diversified considerably in recent years, moving beyond the legacy weapons from past conflicts that have long saturated the region, and increasingly intersecting with other illicit economies. These changes contributed to an uptick in the region’s arms trafficking score between 2021 and 2023 (4.82 to 5.23 out of 10), according to the Global Organized Crime Index, with the largest increases seen in Laos , Myanmar and Thailand . This mirrors broader criminality trends observed in the region under the Index, with the overall score rising by a similar margin, from 5.44 to 5.82. Although arms trafficking remains less severe than other illicit economies, such as human trafficking , synthetic drug production and environmental crimes , and has received less attention than the international scam operations that hav...

  Analysis from the Eastern Asian States Observatories on the Crime after war: Post-Conflict Organized-Crime Dynamics in Russia & Ukraine. The cessation of fighting – in whatever shape it may take – will provide fertile conditions for criminal evolution, encompassing demobilized veterans, displaced citizens, excess weapons, and vast reconstruction funds. The GI-TOC Eurasia Observatory (EAS-Obs) has issued a policy brief named “Crime and Peace: The future of organized crime beyond the Russo-Ukrainian War” that traces the five key criminal risk areas: People, Control, Expertise, Hardware, and Money. A three-part webinar series will introduce these risk areas, work through their potential trajectories and discuss what responses may be effective. The webinars will convene between the months of June and July 2025, to discuss these five analytical pillars. Participants will learn how to: Identify key reservoirs of risk being generated by the conflict; Map the conflict geography in qu...

  Eastern Asian States Observatories on Lithuania's ICJ case against Belarus. Crossing the line: Will Lithuania’s ICJ case against Belarus set a precedent for state accountability in human smuggling?

  The Eastern and Southern Africa Commission on Drugs (ESACD) was formally launched in 2023 to address the serious and multifaceted challenges arising from the escalating illicit drug trade in the region. Countries in Eastern and Southern Africa face increasingly complex issues relating to the production, consumption, distribution and transnational trafficking of illicit drugs . To address these issues effectively, the ESACD has strongly advocated a shift towards more comprehensive and holistic policies, focusing on the root causes and consequences of drug use and dependence , while providing public health services and evidence-based treatment options for people who use drugs where needed . Alongside the health-based and humane responses , there is clear need for more effective law enforcement surveillance and strategies – based on a more strategic assessment of the crime and corruption threats that enable drug trafficking and the harms that come with it.Throughout the course of a...

  The last decade and a half have seen an alarming surge in illegal wildlife trade (IWT) on the internet. However, a dearth of data regarding the scale of the market, its dynamics, operations and ramifications, especially on a global scale, is a significant hindrance to combating this crime. To address this, ECO-SOLVE has developed a Global Monitoring System (GMS) to systematically monitor global online IWT and gather data to feed into law enforcement activity and to inform policymaking. The GMS is a network of data hubs in countries whose domestic online markets are considered the largest or most consequential in their regions. National monitoring nodes are being set up in a staggered process and the size and scope of the network will grow with each edition of the Global Trend Report. This report draws on data from November 2024 to January 2025 from data hubs in Brazil, South Africa and Thailand. By identifying areas of high pressure on endangered species and ecosystems, monito...

  The growth of cyber scam centres around the world is fuelling a global human trafficking crisis on a scale and organizational complexity rarely seen since the height of the transatlantic slave trade. In just a few years, hundreds of thousands of people have been transported into scam operations, many of them forced to perpetrate fraud under threat and in abusive conditions. Often hailing from countries with high unemployment rates or a surplus of tech-savvy graduates, those duped with promises of legitimate jobs may not match stereotypical images of a trafficking victim , leading both them, and those they come into contact with along their journey, to miss important red flags. But vulnerable people in unfamiliar settings, lacking support or access to their passports, are easier to manipulate, intimidate and control. Once they are inside the scam compounds where these operations are conducted, getting them out is difficult. Stopping victims from reaching compounds could be a f...

The UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) held its 34th session in Vienna from 19 to 23 May. This followed the tumultuous March session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), where the current political shifts in the US were on full display . Despite the financial and political crises being experienced by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and its policymaking bodies, all the CCPCJ resolutions were adopted by consensus, in stark contrast to how the CND played out. However, the UNODC’s current challenges were still evident beneath the surface, with polarized positions on issues such as sustainable development and gender. This was set against the backdrop of the UN’s funding crisis, including the significant impact of US funding decisions and upcoming UN reforms. Adding to this uncertainty, the UNODC’s executive director, Ghada Waly, resigned unexpectedly one week after the CCPCJ concluded, before the end of her current contract (due to expire in Febru...

  This report series provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamics driving illegal mining in Ghana , its regional spread, and the actors profiting from it. Based on three years of field research, remote sensing analysis, interviews and desk research, part 1 examines two key case study regions—Western and Savannah—and explores how unlicensed ASGM has grown in scale, complexity, and impact. Part 2 will explore illicit gold supply chains and financial networks in more depth. In places like the Western region, satellite imagery shows dramatic increases in mining activity, with many operations occurring outside officially licensed zones. The environmental impacts are stark. Unregulated use of mercury in gold processing is harming water systems , while mining expansion is causing deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Remote sensing tools—including radar interferometry, flow accumulation analysis, and computer vision models—have been employed to track these developments and predict f...

The report reveals how major EU exporters—including the UK, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands—take advantage of regulatory gaps to mislabel contaminated or mixed plastic as recyclable, circumventing EU and international law s . Türkiye’s weak enforcement, fragmented regulations, and entrenched corruption make it an easy target for both legal and illegal waste flows. Ports like Adana, Mersin, and Ambarlı have become hotspots for plastic waste imports , with Adana alone handling over 60% of the national total. Satellite imagery, field interviews, and customs data consistently show open dumping, illegal burning, and hazardous storage of waste, much of which is unsuitable for recycling. Multinational corporations and waste brokers exploit legal grey areas to offload low-grade waste onto Türkiye, bypassing their environmental responsibilities. Through subcontracting, blending of waste types, and obfuscating end destinations , they create a system of plausible deniability and profit. O...

  This  report  investigates how arms trafficking functions within and across these countries, each with its own ecosystem shaped by history, geography, conflict and criminal trends . As the war in Ukraine continues, concerns are mounting over potential arms spillovers. Yet this report underscores that illegal weapons flows in the region extend far beyond Ukraine, with roots in local cultures, politics and longstanding trafficking networks.  Türkiye emerges as a major source and transit hub for illicit weapons . With an estimated 36 million unlicensed firearms—90% of total civilian arms in the country—the scale is staggering. The report highlights how blank-firing pistols produced legally in Türkiye are trafficked via Bulgaria into the EU, where they are converted into lethal weapons. Transnational networks, terrorist groups and domestic criminals all contribute to Türkiye’s complex firearms market. Greece is primarily a transit country but also has strong domesti...