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