Rising global drug trafficking and crime demand international response, UN official says

Stressing that crime is both the cause and consequence of poverty, insecurity and underdevelopment, a senior United Nations official today called for stringent measures to counteract drug trafficking and violence.

“When drug cultivation and production are run by armed militias, when crime syndicates trade guns for natural resources, when corrupted officials facilitate the transit of human cargo – in all these cases the final result can only be more poverty, greater instability and enormous suffering,” Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Antonio Maria Costa told the General Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee in New York.

These problems were clear in Central and South America, in Western Asia, in the Golden Triangle, and in many African countries, he said. In addition there had been a worrisome increase in drug trafficking, corruption and organized crime in the Middle East and in Africa, with concomitant increases in opium use and cocaine in Europe.

He cited an increase from 41 to 61 per cent of opium flows through Iran, much of it transiting through Gulf Cooperation countries, such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, then on to Europe where 75 per cent of it was consumed.

Some positive developments took place, he said. Colombia has seen a 50 per cent decline since 2000 in coca production, while in Afghanistan opium cultivation declined by 21 per cent from 2004 to 2005, breaking a four-year growth trend. Flows of the Afghan opium through Pakistan had also dropped by 17 percentage points, he said.

Noting that the UNODC had developed 80 per cent accurate methods for tracking opium crop growth, cultivation and export in Afghanistan, he said that the agency was proposing a Mexico City pact to monitor the movement of Colombian drugs through Central America and the Caribbean.

To counter organized crime, drug trafficking and trafficking in humans, the UNODC would be taking a “comprehensive and balanced approach” by tackling both the effects and the causes at the same time. The Office will shortly be conducting research on crime in the Caribbean and Central America. It is developing a $32 million project in Nigeria to fight corruption, and would soon be completing its first report on the trafficking in persons.