Vivienne Chin & Yvon Dandurand

This month started with the Latin America and Caribbean regional preparatory meeting for the 15^th UN Crime Congress in San José, Costa Rica (February 4-6). This and other regional meetings are designed to refine the policy agenda around the main theme already identified for the quinquennial Congress which, this time, will take place in Abu Dhabi in 2026. The overall theme of the Congress is “Accelerating crime prevention, criminal justice and the rule of law: protecting people and planet and achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in the digital age”.  The agenda for the Congress, and the preparatory meetings, covers four broad and ambitious calls for action:

• Advancing innovative and evidence-based crime prevention strategies towards social, economic and environmental development;
• Promoting people-centred, inclusive and responsive criminal justice systems in a world of continuous change;
• Addressing and countering crime – including organized crime and terrorism in all its forms and manifestations – in new, emerging and evolving forms;
• Working better together to elevate cooperation and partnerships, including technical and material assistance and training, at the national, regional and international levels, in crime prevention and criminal justice.

All of these themes were discussed in Costa Rica, but the fourth one of those was the one which, given the circumstances surrounding the meeting, encountered the greatest if sometimes unstated scepticism. Although official country statements about the importance of international cooperation were still made, both diplomatically and with apparent conviction, the background against which the meeting was taking place seem to inspire more doubt than confidence among delegates.

In the corridors, the mood was one of “disbelief”, as people talked among themselves and shared their concerns about the deterioration of the geopolitical climate and the decline of international cooperation in the crime prevention and criminal justice area. As the meeting progressed, participants heard about the imminent dismantling of USAID, something of immediate significance for many countries of the region, as well as the US President’s intention to take over the Panama Canal and the Gaza strip and annex Canada, not to mention sanctions against judges of the International Criminal Court, and various threats of trade wars. At the same time, participants became aware of the quick visit of US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, to Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador and heard with some consternation that the latter had offered to accept deported prisoners from America.

During the meeting itself, participants acknowledged the adoption by the UN General Assembly on December 24^th of the new Convention against Cybercrime, but many of them felt it necessary to reiterate their hope that this new international cooperation tool would be implemented with all the necessary human rights safeguards.

As justice reform professionals who had participated or observed many similar meetings over several decades, we felt that ideas and recommendations were perhaps not advanced and defended with the same vigour and spirit as they used to be. It might also have been because the recommendations that come from that region have had a tendency in the past to neglected within the global crime prevention and criminal justice policy agenda. There was, it seemed, a tone of resignation that did not augur well for future criminal justice cooperation.

Some of the key messages and recommendations we heard from countries of the region were not new but remained nevertheless pressing. Several countries reiterated their plea for more effective control over firearms trafficking and more coordinated action against drug trafficking and gang related activities, different approaches to preventing and controlling migrant smuggling and human trafficking, and effective measures against corruption.

Access to justice, especially for the most vulnerable groups, was also an important part of the discussions, especially with respect to the Recommendations of the Expert Group Meeting on Equal Access to Justice for All, held in Brasilia, Brazil from 9 to 11 December 2024, which Canada, Brazil and other countries of the region would like to see reflected in the official declaration of 15^th Congress.

Recent attacks against the rule of law and the rule-based legal order and specific American attacks against multilateral institutions and various UN organizations created a very uneasy backdrop for multilateral discussions about criminal justice cooperation. One can only hope that the 15^th Congress itself will take place within a much more hopeful and collaborative context. If, as some people have declared, the old American-led rule-based legal order is already defunct, countries should face the urgent task of giving themselves new rules and clearing a path forward for more effective cooperation in the fields of crime prevention and criminal justice.

Photo by Cosmic Timetraveler on Unsplash.