Peace Operations and Organised Crime:
Professor Andrew GoldsmithExecutive Director
Centre for Transnational Crime PreventionUniversity of Wollongong
Building Capabilities to Confront Criminal Networks and Promote Development
Transnational crime – threat to peace
• “I remain particularly concerned about drug-trafficking activities in Guinea-Bissau. The country’s very limited resources and means to curb this threat to peacebuilding and to combat the illegal trafficking is worrisome, as the absence of reliable information.”
• Report of the UN Secretary-General on developments in Guinea-Bissau, 17 June 2011, p.14
Insecurity and illegality – obstacles to development
• “conflicts feed on narcotics, piracy and gender violence, and leave refugees and broken infrastructure in their wake”
• “There are places where fragile states can seek help to build an army, but we do not yet have similar resources for building police forces or correction systems”
[Robert Zoellick, Preface, WDR 2011]
Forms of Action
Harms Caused
Vulnerable persons
Diverted, Implicated Peace Operations
Women and Children
Drug Consumers
Police
Courts and Corrections
GovernmentDisplaced Persons
Diverted Development
Degraded Institutions of Governance
Organised Crime in Conflict-Affected States
Terrorist Actions
Drug Trafficking
Criminal ViolenceHuman Trafficking
Arms Trade
Environmental Crime
Corruption
Piracy
ML
Youth Gangs
Public
Private
West Africa Coast Initiative
• WACI launched in 2009 by UNODC, UNDPKO, UNDPA, UNOWA and INTERPOL in support of the ECOWAS regional plan to address drug trafficking, organised crime in West Africa
• Four pilot countries – Sierra Leone (UNIPSIL), Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS), Liberia (UNMIL) and Cote D’Ivoire (UNOCI)
• First High Level Policy Committee (WACI POLCOM met on 21 June 2011 in Dakar, Senegal [picture]• 27 October 2011 – first Program Advisory
Committee meeting (WACI PROCOM) held in Bissau
Transnational crime units
• One key strategy of WACI: establishment of Transnational Crime Units in Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Liberia
• In Guinea-Bissau, in addition to TCU, UN through its Peacebuilding Commission has contributed to capacity-building judges, prosecutors and police investigators in relation to drug trafficking and transnational crime; also working on critical infrastructure, SSR more broadly, and international cooperation/mutual legal assistance in criminal matters
• 12 September: opened “model Police Station”, 11 more planned: gender, community policing focus
TCU structurecourtesy UNODC
Customs
Immigration Gendarmerie
ProsecutionTCU
National
Intelligence
Police
INTERPOL NCB
Serious Crime Support Units
Support to PC, UNPOL & JMAC
Analysis & Operational Support
Support to Host-State Police
UNPOL positions in each mission
“We need to know more” - McChrystal
• “We didn’t know enough and we still don’t know enough.
• “Most of us, me included, had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history”
“reliable data on youth gangs in the narcotics trade are virtually non-existent” (WB/LAC 2011, p. 16)
“This Report draws upon research from a variety of fields…largely because it is further advanced than research on violent organized crime, trafficking, gang activity, or terrorism” WDR 2011
“The case against grand plans” – Rory Stewart
• “If there is a lesson from all these countries, it is that there is no substitute for detailed experience in a particular place.
• “The best the west can do is to rely on more people who are focused on the specific history and culture…, more attentive to the realities of rural life.
Characteristics of OC Responses
National Security
Police and Military Intelligence
Police Skills
Short-term Focus
Stop Immediate Harm
Abstract Community Support
Tactical Success
Human Security
Human Security Intelligence
Diverse Skills
Longer-term Focus
Build Conditions for Security Resilience
Embedded Community Support
Strategic Success
Containment Transformation
THE END
“As long as we cannot up-level our ‘thinking’ beyond Us and Them, the goodies and the
baddies, it will go on and on”[RD Laing]
FREEDOM FROM FEAR, FREEDOM FROM WANT