Task Forces on Strengthening Multilateral Security Capacity Organized Crime Private Security Terrorism Management of UN Peace Operations The UN Security Council and Compliance

Knowing What Counts

Organized Crime

The 2005 Human Security Report indicated that in most people’s view it is violent crime that represents the greatest threat to their personal security. That threat is increasingly global: the globalization of transportation, communications, and finance has benefited not only licit business, but also professional criminals. And organized crime flourishes where state control is weak or ineffective – in war zones, cyberspace, and private bank accounts, for example. As a result, crime is transforming from a threat to personal security into a threat to the security of whole nations, regions, and international peace and security itself. But even as crime is transnationalized, crime control remains largely corralled behind national borders.

Our work focuses on:

1. how multilateral mechanisms, including peace operations, can best deal with organized crime in conflict-affected and fragile states; and
2. how to improve strategic and operational coordination between the various multilateral mechanisms addressing organized crime from different angles – the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UN police, UN sanctions bodies, INTERPOL, regional policing organizations, and other bodies.

Recent Activity
In November 2007, IPI co-hosted a seminar on Peace Operations and Organized Crime with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, in Geneva. This seminar produced policy insights and a series of case studies on peace operations’ response to organized crime in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Haiti, and West Africa, which will appear in revised form as a special issue of International Peacekeeping (February 2009).

IPI is now pursuing a number of other collaborative initiatives with the UN and its member states to consider acting on these policy insights. Amongst these are IPI’s Task Force on Transnational Security Challenges, which includes a Roundtable on Transnational Organized Crime.

IPI is also working with the International Police Advisory Council, a high-level forum created by the Police Division of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations for critical discussion and policy input on international policing matters, in preparation for its 2008 meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, which will address Peace Operations and Organized Crime.

IPI Associate James Cockayne also serves as the Chair of the Editorial Committee of the Journal of International Criminal Justice.

Staff
Mr. James Cockayne, Associate

Publications

• James Cockayne, “Transnational Organized Crime: Multilateral Responses to a Rising Threat”, Coping with Crisis Working Paper Series (IPA: New York, April 2007)
• James Cockayne and Christoph Mikulaschek, “Transnational Security Challenges and the United Nations: Overcoming Sovereign Walls and Institutional Silos” (IPA: New York, February 2008)
• James Cockayne and Daniel Pfister, “Peace Operations and Organized Crime,” (IPA and GCSP: New York and Geneva, 2008)
• James Cockayne and Adam Lupel, eds., “Peace Operations and Organized Crime,” Special Issue of International Peacekeeping, forthcoming 2009

Other events