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

  Ordinarily, staff at the United Nations Office in Vienna would now be preparing for a well-earned summer: tying up loose ends, attending final meetings, setting out-of-office replies and beginning to unwind. This year, however, employees at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) will find it very difficult to switch off, as geopolitical tensions are having a direct impact on their work and prospects. Delegates covering UNODC issues in Vienna have endured a particularly heavy agenda and dramatic turns of events this year. Until recently, staff at the permanent missions could more or less predict what would happen in the coming months. But predictability has now altogether disappeared, and old assumptions about multilateral diplomacy are on life support, including the idea that reaching consensus on issues was the norm, a concept known as the ‘Vienna spirit’. The UNODC is facing crises from all angles. Its project-dependent funding base is under existential threat; UN reforms a...

  Analysis from the Haiti Observatories on the Weaponization of displacement by gangs. In 2024, crime-related violence triggered the displacement of at least 1.2 million people globally – more than twice the number recorded in the previous year. In a report to the Human Rights Council in June 2025, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Paula Gaviria Betancur, warned of the growing role of organized crime as a catalyst for internal displacement worldwide and as a source of serious human rights violations . Haiti has emerged as the epicentre of this crisis. The country accounted for approximately three-quarters of all crime-induced displacement in 2024, reflecting the scale and severity of gang-driven security, political and humanitarian collapse currently underway. The situation has continued to deteriorate in 2025. As of July, over 1.3 million people have been internally displaced in the country, an increase of at least 24% since January. T...

  Analysis from the Americas Observatories on Organized crime is driving a deadly surge in violence in Brazil. Violence in Brazil’s northern and north-eastern regions is a growing concern. In 2023, the homicide rate in northern Brazil was 41.5% higher than the national average. Meanwhile, six of the 10 cities with the highest homicide rates in the country in 2023 were in the north-eastern state of Bahia . Rising insecurity in these regions has been driven by the country’s two mafia-style groups , Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho (CV), moving into these areas. The Brazilian government is seeking to address this violence by proposing a constitutional amendment to reform public security. The bill, which is currently being debated in congress, aims to standardize police operational strategies and codes of conduct across Brazil’s 27 states to bolster enforcement efforts against organized crime. Alongside this proposal, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administratio...

  Human trafficking and the smuggling of migrants continue to dominate political debates and multilateral discourse as leaders search for new tools and strategies to address these crimes. In this context, targeted financial and mobility sanctions have recently emerged as a high-profile option for policymakers. In June 2025, the Group of Seven (G7) became the latest forum to endorse the use of sanctions to counter migrant smuggling and human trafficking. In a communiqué issued after their latest meeting in Kananaskis, Canada, G7 leaders stated: ‘ We will explore, consistent with our legal systems, the potential use of sanctions to target criminals involved in migrant smuggling and human trafficking operations from countries where those activities emanate.' This statement is in line with the growing interest in applying sanctions for this purpose. In January 2025, the UK announced its intention to create a sanctions regime specifically to target the smuggling of migrants, with o...

  Identifying the Emerging challenges in human trafficking: risks to gender equality & decent work. At this year’s HLPF, governments will review SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls; and SDG 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. These goals recognize that ending human trafficking is essential to achieving their aims. Human trafficking has an outsized impact on women and girls, and eliminating it is crucial for achieving SDG 5. In addition, we cannot provide decent work for all while people are forced to work without choice, through coercion and threats. This side event will focus on the SDG 5 and SDG 8 targets relating to human trafficking, assessing trends and emerging challenges. Participants will hear from governments, UN agencies and civil society organizations about the risks to achieving these goals and how to respond to them. Welcome remarks: HE Ambassador Mere...

  This issue summarizes key findings for two sets of substances whose markets are undergoing significant changes: cannabis and cocaine. It explores the emergence of a liberal cannabis policy belt in parts of western Europe and the resilience of illicit cannabis markets, including cannabis resin. It also highlights the quiet but strategic use of procaine as a cutting agent in the cocaine trade . There are methodological limitations and caveats on how to interpret the findings: no toxicological analysis of the surveyed substances can be conducted, therefore caution needs to be applied in analyzing the data; the analysis lacks comparisons due to the absence of previous data; and the research focuses only on the supply of illicit drugs , not the potential demand for them, limiting explanations of the size of drug markets . We are introducing a new digital tool that features a drug prices map, enabling users to monitor drug prices in major European cities . This tool will provide a ...

  Money laundering remains a key enabler of organized crime in the Western Balkans , allowing criminal networks to legitimize illicit profits and integrate them into the formal economy. This report examines current trends, typologies and vulnerabilities shaping the region’s illicit financial flows.  The study outlines how systemic corruption, weak regulatory oversight, and a sizeable informal economy create fertile ground for laundering proceeds from drug trafficking, firearms smuggling, human trafficking, migrant smuggling, tax evasion and cyber-enabled crime . Key sectors, including construction, real estate and cash-intensive businesses, are often exploited, with typologies such as bulk cash smuggling, corporate layering, trade-based money laundering, underpriced real estate transactions and loan-back schemes featuring prominently. Professional enablers, such as notaries, accountants, attorneys, and even entertainment celebrities, facilitate the integration of dirty mone...

  Analysis from the Americas States Observatories on the Environmental impacts and transitions across illicit, informal and licit economies in Colombia. Illicit economies have been related in complex ways to the armed conflict and criminal governance in Colombia (CEV, 2022; Rettberg, Cárdenas, Ortiz-Riomalo, 2017). The development of these activities, along with state responses to control them, have had significant consequences for local economies and have also impacted the environmen t (Brombacher, Garzón & Vélez, 2021; UNODC, 2022; UNODC, 2021; Rubiano, Vélez & Rueda, 2020). The aim of this report is to analyze the functioning of the coca, cocaine, and gold mining production markets in Colombia to assess their relationships with environmental damages, such as deforestation . In addition to the functioning of these markets, this research explores the interactions of these illicit activities with other productive sectors that also generate environmental costs, such as cat...

  Analysis from the Eastern Asian State observatories on The city of Dnipro: The front line of crime , Dnipro has long played a pivotal role in Ukraine’s political and economic development. Today, the city stands at another crossroads, as a key site for understanding how organized crime has evolved under the pressures of war. This report offers a detailed account of the city’s criminal landscape, drawing on field research, interviews, and open-source analysis. The full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 has fuelled existing trends in Dnipro, a city already familiar with conflict since 2014. Dnipro’s proximity to the front line and its importance as a logistics and military hub have intensified its role in illicit markets, particularly in arms and drug trafficking. The city has also become one of the country’s most important bases for scam call centres , with around 30 000 people employed in operations that target victims across Russia, the EU and Ukraine itself. Many of these centr...

  Since the early 2000s CSEA has undergone a significant transformation, largely driven by increased digital connectivity and technological advances such as encrypted communications, anonymous payment systems and cryptocurrencies. Crackdowns in the physical realm and in certain countries have led to displacement to other regions and platforms, with further displacement likely to occur. Livestreaming of child sexual abuse, sextortion , and the sale of CSAM now operate through cross-border chains that link facilitators, recruiters, and payment handlers. The shift towards more sophisticated, networked, and organized forms of exploitation underscores the need for an organized crime framework that emphasizes perpetrator identification and the dismantling of networks.The brief shows that the most organized forms of CSEA are linked to the production and distribution of CSAM. Extreme poverty in target countries, increasing availability of high-speed internet and a large overseas custome...

  The deployment of organized criminal gangs by politicians to counter peaceful protests in Nairobi in June has once again raised the spectre of violence in Kenya ahead of the 2027 general elections, threatening peace, cohesion and integration in a country battling to retain its hold on democracy. On 25 June, organized criminals armed with whips and clubs, and backed by the police unleashed terror on a peaceful march commemorating one year since the historic GenZ uprising against punitive taxes, in which 60 people were killed. A week earlier, on 18 June, the same anarchists, some riding passenger motorcycles (known locally as boda boda), had confronted hundreds of people peacefully demanding the arrest and prosecution of a senior police officer suspected of involvement in the death of 31-year-old teacher and political blogger Alfred Ojwang in police custody. While the media has widely described them as ‘ hired goons ’, the attacks were in fact more organized and calculated: thes...

  The agreement signed on 27 June 2025 between the DRC and Rwanda represents an opportunity to make progress in resolving the M23 crisis in eastern DRC. However, the US administration’s success in sponsoring this agreement might prove short-lived, primarily because it does not prioritize the fight against organized crime. The benefits that all the national and international protagonists in the conflict derive from their involvement in illicit economies have over the years become the most structural factor of this conflict. While armed rebel groups like the M23, and other militias, may not embody the essence of the archetypal criminal organization as we normally conceive of it, they are nevertheless sustained by illicit activities, like other organized criminal actors, using violence to control economic activities, the revenue from which has enabled them to set up a parallel administration. The conflict in the DRC has thus become structurally criminalized by all armed actors...