How to address organized crime through strategic partnerships among law enforcement agencies, national institutions, civil society organizations and private sector, will be the focus of an OSCE conference opening on Monday, 5 October in Vienna’s Hofburg for OSCE delegations and online via Zoom for other participants.
The conference will bring together representatives from relevant government institutions (such as the Ministries of Justice, Interior and Finance, the judiciary, among others), and experts from academia, civil society, the United Nations and other relevant international and regional organizations.
Over the course of the one-day conference, participants will assess the threat that organized crime poses within the OSCE region as well as responses. They will also discuss what the OSCE participating States and Mediterranean Partners can do to counter organized crime and illicit finance, and discuss the challenges posed by cyber-enabled crime and COVID-19.
The conference is organized by Albania’s 2020 OSCE Chairmanship, Mediterranean Partners for Co-operation Group and the Strategic Police Matters Unit of the OSCE Secretariat’s Transnational Threats Department.
Albania’s Deputy Minister of Interior, Besfort Lamallari; Director of the Division for Treaty Affairs at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, John Brandolino; the Swedish Foreign Ministry’s Special Envoy for the fight against organized crime, Ambassador Håkan Jevrell; and Co-ordinator of OSCE Activities to Address Transnational Threats, Ambassador Alena Kupchyna will open the conference. The Permanent Representative of Germany to the OSCE, Ambassador Gesa Bräutigam, will moderate the opening session.