Crossing the line.

 


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?
Location: Lithuania

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crossroads of crime and resilience.

Image
  2.1 Global drug trafficking shifts to a duopoly Drug markets have been undergoing profound transformations, driven by major shifts in the global criminal economy. Disruptions in Afghan heroin production, surging cocaine supplies, the steady rise in the market for synthetic opioids, and the partial legalization of cannabis in some countries are reshaping patterns of production, trafficking and consumption worldwide.1 As the dynamics of the drug markets change, the consequences for public health, organized criminal activity and drug-related violence are becoming increasingly severe. © Rashide Frias/AFP via Getty Images The result is a steadily expanding global drug trade, marked by record-high drug use and mounting social and security costs in nearly every region. The 2025 World Drug Report estimates that 316 million people used drugs in 2023 – a 28% increase over the past decade, outpacing global population growth.2 Beneath this overarching trend, distinct dynamics are emerging th...
Read more

Where do we go from here?

Image
  The world is at a moment of inflection and the Index findings support this notion, as geopolitical, economic and technological disruptions are redrawing the contours of the global criminal economy. Organized crime is not only expanding but fundamentally reorganizing, embedding itself more deeply in licit systems with a speed and sophistication that continue to outpace state responses. Traditional trafficking routes are being redrawn, new commodities are displacing old ones, criminal actors that operate across borders or within the legal economy are consolidating, and new and less visible illicit markets are spreading. These dynamics exploit governance gaps and technological shifts, and are expected to shape developments in the years ahead. Earlier patterns have not disappeared, however; they persist, even as the trajectory increasingly points in new directions. Among the major shifts transforming the criminal ecosystem, the Index highlights several critical dynamics: the growing ...
Read more

Trajectories.

Image
Criminality and resilience are part of an interlinked web of numerous and overlapping dynamics that are continually changing over time. For policymakers, understanding how these dynamics translate into vulnerabilities, and developing adequate responses is an immense challenge, particularly as transformations in organized crime dynamics have become marked in recent years. In this context, the value of the Index becomes clear. The Index not only measures the scale of criminal activity, but also identifies the strengths and weaknesses of institutional anti-organized crime systems. The vulnerability matrix illustrates the interaction between criminality and resilience by positioning each of the 193 assessed countries within one of four quadrants (see Figure 22). This approach enables stakeholders to monitor shifts in vulnerability specific to their own context and to respond to emerging risks. Figure 22 - Vulnerability classification (2025) Made with Flourish • Create a chart   ...
Read more