Vienna, 26 April - The Fourteenth United Nations Crime Congress will be held in Kyoto, Japan, from 20 to 27 April 2020 and will explore effective measures to deal with various issues on crime prevention and criminal justice. To ensure that regional issues and perspectives are considered at the Congress, a series of five regional preparatory meetings were organized by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) between January and April 2019.
The regional preparatory meetings were held in Bangkok for Asia and the Pacific, Santiago for Latin American and the Caribbean, Beirut for Western Asia, Addis Ababa for Africa, and concluded with the European Regional Preparatory Meeting held from 23 to 25 April in Vienna.
John Brandolino, Director of the UNODC Division for Treaty Affairs, delivered welcome remarks at the meeting in Vienna on behalf of the UNODC Executive Director. He highlighted that the office's capacity-building efforts are "essential to support the rule of law and achieve Goal 16 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which is reflected in the overall theme of the Fourteenth Congress."
Mr. Yoshimitsu Yamauchi, the Assistant Vice-Minister of Justice of Japan presented the city of Kyoto, where the Fourteenth Congress will take place and underscored the importance of the host country to "have solid understanding of the key issues in the different regional contexts."
The topics that were identified by the meetings as needing attention were diverse and showed the breadth of issues dealt with by the crime congress. They included violence against women and children, urban crime, restorative justice, access to justice, a culture of lawfulness, education for justice, corruption, transnational organized crime, environmental crime, prevention of reoffending, public-private partnerships, terrorism and cybercrime.
The regional meetings also discussed the importance of ensuring appropriate follow-up to the crime congresses in programmatic terms by UNODC and also through strengthening the role of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) in the follow-up process. Each of the regional preparatory meetings made action-oriented recommendations for consideration by the Fourteenth Congress.
The meeting in Vienna was chaired by Ambassador Alena Kupchyna (Chair, Belarus) and Lucie Angers (Vice-Chair, Canada) and also attended by Jo Dedeyne-Amann, the Secretary of the CCPCJ. At the opening of the meeting, participants observed a minute of silence, paying tribute to Dimitri Vlassis, former Chief of Corruption and Economic Crime Branch, who passed away two weeks ago.
The five regional preparatory meetings were attended by over 550 participants from 180 countries, UN entities, international organizations, Programme Network Institutes and Non-Governmental Organizations. Regional preparatory meetings have preceded the quinquennial crime congresses since 1970.
Fourteenth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
2019 Regional Preparatory Meetings
