UNODC chief warns technology is reshaping global crime

0:00With us today is Ms. Monica Juma, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Johnson Crime. She's gonna walk us through some of the main issues being dealt with at the 15th UN Crime Congress, which is set to take place in Abu Dhabi. Ms. Juma, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us today. Thank you very much for this opportunity. So a lot of times what happens is the average person might find it difficult to connect to these major UN conferences. Why should people pay attention to this particular conference? Well, people should pay attention to this Congress because it relates to matters of public safety that I experienced every day by every person across the world. That's why the Crime Congress is so important to map the way around criminal justice and the rule of law. Okay. And, you know, coming into this Congress at a moment where the nature of crime itself

1:02is changing rapidly, what do you see as the single biggest shift in global crime landscape that governments need to respond to differently? Well, first of all, this is the 15th Congress. It convenes every five years. So you can imagine five years ago, this conversation would have been very different. So this provides a platform where the world converges to ask the question, what has changed? How has crime changed? What are the patterns we are seeing? And so it becomes a real opportunity to look, for example, at the defining factor today, which is technology. You know, over the last five years, you can think back to five years. The way technology was evolving was very different. Right now, we are having technology enabling crime different various crimes across various sectors.

2:04And so what we are seeing is a convergence of crime types that is creating an ecosystem of criminal profiteering with very far footprint across the world. And that is what is changing the technology. Because by technology, you can reach, you can target millions of people within a fraction of a second. So you don't need intermediaries, you don't need to cross borders, you know, because technology can enable that across borders very quickly. That is what has significantly changed. Well, you mentioned this digital age that we're in, and we can see that the digital gap between the global north and the global south has been widening. So how does UNODC plan on using this crime congress to ensure that justice and law enforcement systems in developing countries are not left behind, especially in this age of artificial intelligence?

3:06Well, we are actually, that is why, first of all, the platform is so important, because it's a global convergence. And that is the value of the UN that we have the capacity as UNODC to bring everyone on the table. So we are expecting full membership of the United Nations in Abu Dhabi so that we can have that representation from everywhere in the world. Secondly, in fact, technology is not living anyone behind. It is precisely where we have on the abilities of technology that we need to focus attention more. Because even in countries that we consider very advanced in terms of technology, they are as vulnerable as the weakest ones. And that is why it is important that there is a convergence of those that are ahead, plus those that might have some vulnerabilities and risk, because that could be the weak point that is leveraged by the criminal groups.

4:09But a lot of people are concerned now with the AI and almost every UN official has been speaking about some of the dangers, as well as the opportunities that it presents. For criminal justice systems, how can countries harness the power of this technology while also adjusting the very real concerns surrounding it? Well, these technologies are double-aged swords, so to speak, they have the positive side, which is the advantage we are encouraging countries to deploy, and that comes with more cooperation. For example, how do you share information, intelligence, how do you share evidence, how do you curate the evidence, how do you follow the evidence across borders? And that, you can be given the advantage of speed by technology, you can be given the advantage of analysis, if you are talking like forensic analysis and things like that.

5:12But that ability to translate that cooperation is not enabled fully on the member-state side, because it has to be enabled by institutional frameworks, by policies, the right policies, the right cooperation mechanisms, the right relationships and things like that. And that is why at UNODC, we are increasingly creating platforms for interface between the various sectors within government, but also those sectors across borders. For example, investigators, prosecutors, police enforcement officials, judicial officials, now even journalists, investigative journalists, so that you can create a convergence of competencies, that you can use very quickly, so that when you see something, you can convey that information, that evidence, that suspicion, that indicator to somebody

6:14who can act on it almost immediately. Now, the organized crime people have no body inhibitions. This is not the time where traffic is dependent on people carrying people across in boats. Now they are using technology to use this information, creating fake jobs and sometimes, even ending up in legitimate business supply chains, whether you're talking about, for example, banking services. And so the duty we have is to create competencies to separate when that begins to happen. And that is why cooperation across different technical competencies and across borders becomes extremely important. I want to turn to one of the major events

7:14that are on the agenda for the Crime Congress, which is on the UN Cyber Crime Convention. As you know, this was adopted unanimously by the General Assembly and last year, 70 countries signed on. Why is this treaty so important? And what are the challenges in getting it from adoption to signature to implementation? Well, first of all, we have more than 80 signatories already. So it is doing very well. We have a couple of ratifications. We are calling and encouraging countries to ratify so that it can enter into force. Now, ratification is a domestic legislative process. So a lot of countries that I personally have spoken to have actually indicated that that process is ongoing. Now, there is an imperative of time, because until it enters into force, it's full utilization would be limited. But I have been told that there are countries that are going at the cusp of that ratification

8:16and we hope that it can enter into force in a short while. The value of this is that it provides the cyber crime convention, provide a full toolkit that offers cooperation mechanisms, offers enables that cooperation and facilitates it. So it enables countries to create frameworks of cooperation more easily and with various similar standards, so it creates a standard that will enable hopefully, from where I sit, faster and more agile response to these common threats. One of the threats that is on a lot of people's radar is the expansion of these large-scale scam centers, which hundreds of thousands of victims are trafficked and forced to commit cyber crimes. Many of these victims are treated as criminals,

9:16rather than the victims that they are. So what I wanted to ask you is how do you plan on addressing their plight at the crime congress and have them recognize and protected rather than retraumatized by law? Well, first of all, the scam centers are really a global crisis. In the last report on scum centers in Southeast Asia indicate that more than 80 nationalities, 80 in the world in the last assessment, have been victims, you know, 80 countries and they are drawn from everywhere. So this is a global situation that is expanding exponentially. Numbers of people are huge in growing because of course, they manifest like genuine opportunities

10:21for young people who are curious, who are ready to work, who want to work and experience the world. So these scum centers are a real pandemic, if you think about it. And it is very, very important to cooperate. Now, when they get into those scum centers, a large number of those young people, mainly, are victims, as you say. And it is very important that they are conceived as victims rather than culprits, you know, and that we follow who the perpetrators of the crime is. It is the people that are deceiving them. It's the people that are recruiting them. It is the people that are misleading them and so forth. And so it is important to think around the point of rehabilitation of, first of all, defining them as victims, protecting their rights, you know. Going through rehabilitation and treatment phase, some of them are traumatized,

11:21some of them are been tortured, some of them have been abused. You know, all manner of stories come out of those scum centers. So it is very, very important that they are treated like the victims that they are protected. They are nursed through that experience and they are even helped in terms of rehabilitation because some of them have experienced very traumatic experiences that will stay with them for a very long time. So in terms and part of the criminal justice system capacity building we do is really on how to handle victims and vulnerable groups that have been found themselves in those unfortunate circumstances. You know, you're headed to your first crime congress in your new role as the executive director of UNODC and we are in a very turbulent time, let's say that's marked by geopolitical polarization

12:23and global tensions. How are you planning to ensure that the final outcome provides actionable solutions? And what is your message to every delegate heading to Abu Dhabi? Well, it is true that the world is in a very concerning situation, might say, but it is also true that the threat of crime, whether this is trafficking, the threat of drugs, whether this is a plant based of synthetic drugs, the threat of terrorism, you know, the threat of fragility caused by the lack of capacity to have good governance and rule of law, all these are things that people feel every day across the world. And I can tell you that across the world, everybody appreciates the importance of coming together

13:28to restore a safer and secure world, you know, because it is impossible to even create any level of productivity, any level of sustainability of any endeavor, if you are experiencing insecurity at a personal local community level, which is what drugs and crime and trafficking is doing, affecting people at the lowest, at every level really. But that makes it that reality, that reality of these threats make it easier to cooperate, easier to look for solutions. And so we have a situation where there is a convergence, one of the level of threat and a convergence, one of the desire to look for solution. And so as we come to a Dhabi, I think there is no debate whether this is important or not. So the focus will be on the solution.

14:28And we hope that we can take that solution from Kyoto to now look at the current threat and that they are being accelerated by new intervening variables such as technology and hence the role of technology in aiding us to respond in an agile and more effective manner so that we can restore safer environments, secure communities and hopefully better prosperity for the world.