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

Contents.  Director’s message: The Index as a compass to navigate the choices ahead Section 1 - Introduction: Shifts in the global criminal landscape Section 2 - Crossroads of crime and resilience 2.1 Global drug trafficking shifts to a duopoly 2.2 Forms of non-violent organized crime are exerting a growing impact, adding to the burden of enduring violent crimes 2.3 Counterfeiting at a crossroads: growth in an unstable global economy 2.4 Architects of criminal expansion 2.5 Resilience at a crossroads: international cooperation and judicial systems under pressure Section 3 - Trajectories 3.1 Containing criminality and boosting resilience 3.2 The path of most resistance: state-embedded actors as an obstacle to resilience Section 4 - Where do we go from here? Section 5 - Appendix: Index data set 5.1 Criminality indicators 5.2 Resilience indicators GLOBAL ORGANIZED CRIME INDEX 2025 . This year’s Index also shows that, while state-embedded actors are the most prevalent criminal actors...

  The United Nations helps countries share intelligence, strengthen laws and dismantle criminal networks. Fighting organized crime goes beyond law enforcement. It means providing jobs and education for young people, protecting human rights & building economies that leave no one behind.

  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...