8 March 2021 – UNODC’s Education for Justice (E4J) initiative has engaged with youth in numerous ways over the past five years, with a variety of methods and tools developed specifically to teach the younger generation to think about rule of law issues. One of the most popular events regularly organized by UNODC and its partners have been the hackathons – or coding challenges – held in several countries around the world, giving students the opportunity to unleash their creativity while thinking about tackling crime.
Also in the realm of technology, E4J created the Justice Accelerators, a six-month programme designed to equip young aspiring techies with the skills to build technology-driven enterprises tackling crime prevention and rule of law issues. The premise of this programme is providing a chance to explore young people’s untapped innovative potential, making them ponder real life problems and seek original ways to help face them through technology.
Partnerships with the private sector are important in this field, not only because of tech companies’ expertise, but because of the need to link corporate social responsibility with the empowerment of youth, and the need to foster gender equality in the tech sector.
At the 14th Crime Congress in Kyoto today, E4J hosted an ancillary meeting on the theme of youth, technology, and the rule of law. To discuss various examples under this topic, UNODC experts were joined by renowned techpreneur Eileen Brewer; Country Director of American Councils in Armenia Dagen Valentine; and Justice Accelerators Programme Assistant Aikanysh Sydykova. In addition, ten young winners of previous E4J hackathons shared their experiences with the audience about their participation in these events, the apps they created, and the lessons they learned from this engagement.
Catch the full session in the video below and follow all our reporting from the 14th Crime Congress on Twitter and by using #DohaToKyoto.
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