- Home
- A-Z Publications
- Freedom from Fear
- Previous Issues
- Volume 2008, Issue 1, 2008
Freedom from Fear - Volume 2008, Issue 1, 2008
Volume 2008, Issue 1, 2008
This journal aims to contribute to the advancement of knowledge and awareness of the international community’s priority issues in the field of justice, crime prevention and human rights. The Magazine pursues the promotion of innovative dialogue by spreading awareness, creating consensus and a sense of shared responsibility of the problems that affect the global community. As a forum for long-term change, the Magazine endeavors to promote democratic values, civil stability, and aid the international community in developing actions towards greater peace, justice and security for all members of social, civil and political society.
-
-
Criminal connections
Author: Loretta NapoleoniTerritoriality remains paramount to organized crime, and in a globalised economy the geography of crime expands exponentially. Local criminal organizations are presented with new international opportunities almost daily, as shown by the recent transformation of the Camorra. Over the last few years, the Neapolitan organization internationalised its dirty business by entering into joint ventures with the Chinese Triads operating in Italy. At the same time, in a globalised economy, competition from local organizations prevents the formation of international, centralized networks similar to Cosa Nostra’s twentieth-century monopoly on crime across the Atlantic, but encourages economic alliances. The new criminal model, therefore, revolves around business ventures between foreign and local crime. This is the paradigm followed by the n’drangheta.
-
-
-
Illicit exploitation of natural resources
Author: Rico Carischin Angola, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, warlords and leaders of militias and rebel movements prospered from the pillaging of their nation’s natural wealth as much as financiers of crime rackets, dishonest civil servants, corrupt politicians or national and international corporations. This impromptu alliance of stakeholders in Africa’s wars and violence could be broken down only with tens of thousands of peacekeepers, targeted sanctions against the most persistent looters and with billions of Dollars invested in rebuilding governmental capacities. Still, many nations are far from safe. Too heavy is the toll of war, violence and corruption to rebuild these countries in a few short years. With global demand for most commodities reaching record heights and while most of these resource rich states’ oversight and law enforcement institutions are still in shambles, it is as easy as ever - and much more profitable - to gain access to natural resources. Adhering to legal standards continues to be a minor consideration. For warlords and leaders of militias who have successfully transformed themselves into elites by joining political parties or by becoming businessmen, it’s business as usual. Sadly, these elites are greatly assisted by the apparent disinterest or inability of leading global companies – the ultimate users of raw materials - to reign-in the continued illegal exploitation of the developing world’s natural resources. Just in the last few months several investigations have revealed once again how criminal behavior is still pervasive in the natural resource business and how it affects each consumer around the world in unexpected ways. For at least four years it has been known that thousands of artisan diggers are exploiting cassiterite deposits (a tin oxide) around Walikale, in Eastern DRC. A report by Nicholas Garrett in the Financial Times (6th March 2008) confirmed again that these artisans are laboring under the dictate of the renegade 85th brigade of the Congolese army led by Colonel Samy Matumo. The production not only enriches these bands of soldiers and their commanders, but for years the cassiterite has been bought and traded through Western metals exchanges and brokers. Eventually it is used for the production of electronic products made by largest companies in this sector.
-
-
-
Curbing illicit brokering in the arms trade. Challenges and opportunities
Authors: Valerie Yankey-Wayne and Robin Edward PoultonThe 2007 UN Group of Governmental Experts on Illicit Arms Brokering defined a broker as a person or entity acting as an intermediary that brings together relevant parties and arranges or facilitates a potential transaction in return for some form of benefit, whether financial or otherwise. Brokering does not necessarily pass through the territory of the country where the brokering activity takes place, nor does the broker necessarily take ownership of the weapons.
-
-
-
Terrorism. Veiling the attackers, unveiling the victims
Author: Francesco CandelariMartin Luther King once said, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” He died 40 years ago, but this statment rings even truer today. In early September, at the United Nations Headquarters, the Secretary General convened a Symposium on Supporting Victims of Terrorism: 18 victims and 10 experts from around the world had an opportunity to speak and break the wall of silence which often confines them behind after the clamor of terrorist attacks. The media is frequently more interested in finding a voice or a statement from the terrorist group that committed the attack. But for the victims, when the lights go off, nothing is ever again as it was before.
-
-
-
Human trafficking on the U.S. - Mexico border. Is there a nexus with immigration policies?
Authors: Susan Tiano, Billy Ulibarri and Carolina RamosThe U.S.-Mexico border presents a distinctive set of challenges for combating human trafficking. The involuntary transport of human beings in order to exploit their labour or sexuality is nothing new. Yet conditions in the current era of globalization—growing economic inequalities within and among nations, increasing flows of labour and products across national borders, and the growth of informal economies and organized criminal networks, to name a few—are causing it to proliferate on a global scale (Farr, 2005).
-
-
-
Drug industry in Afghanistan
Author: Christina OguzAfghanistan is a male-dominated society. It is also a society where authority and power mean a lot. I think that the fact that I am a guest in their country, a foreign woman, representing the United Nations – a respected organization – works in my favour. Afghanistan is very different from my own home country, Sweden, but beyond the surface we are all surprisingly alike. Daily life in Kabul is not very comfortable; I lived in one room for more than a year before I found a small flat in a securitycleared compound. The security situation is very worrying and limits your personal life as well as the work of the United Nations. The suicide attack on a UN convoy in Kandahar province in the south of the country on 14 September, which killed two WHO colleagues, was a terrible blow to all of us. It is getting increasingly difficult and dangerous. Half of the country is at least partially out of reach for us because of lack of security. The costs of operations are going up because of the volatile situation.
-
-
-
Challenges in the control of synthetic drugs of abuse
Authors: Barbara Remberg and Justice TetteySynthetic psychoactive substances continue to be the bane of drug regulators worldwide. Even in the 1960s, before the pyschopharmacologist Alexander Shulgin experimented with and published synthetic routes for hundreds of psychoactive substances (in what is perhaps the opening of Pandora’s box in terms of synthetic drugs of abuse), the world has had to contend with the problems of modern times such as the abuse of ecstasy (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, MDMA). At the twentieth special session of the UN General Assembly (UNGASS) on countering the world drug problem, Member States adopted a Political Declaration that called for, inter alia, the elimination or significant reduction of illicit manufacture, marketing and trafficking of psychotropic substances, synthetic drugs and precursors by 2008. Ten years is a significant milestone to reflect on what has been, and continues to be one of the most challenging aspects of drug control in the modern era.
-
-
-
Counterfeiting. The hidden crime
Authors: Marco Musumeci and Sandro CalvaniWhy does the public opinion not consider counterfeiting as serious a crime as drug trafficking or arms smuggling? First of all, let us consider what a “serious crime” means to law enforcers and to the general public.
-
-
-
Weapons of mass destruction. A comprehensive approach
Authors: Francesco Marelli and Marian De BruijnEver since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ ‘doomsday clock’ is recognized as a symbol for the nuclear threat in the world. The minutes before midnight on the clock demonstrate the actual threat. Since the beginning, the clock’s arm has been moved back and forth, whenever the nuclear threat situation in the world changed. At the end of the Cold War the clock stood at seventeen minutes to midnight, while at the last presentation, in 2007, the clock was ticking five minutes to midnight.
-
-
-
Interdicting bioviolence
Author: Barry KellmanConsider the implications of international trafficking of pathogens. Disease has always been ubiquitous, of course, moving via natural currents with little regard for national boundaries. Yet, when the element of human intention is added, the dangers of disease become transformed into an imperceptible weapon of mass destruction.
-
-
-
Criminal assets. A little lateral thinking
Author: Radha IvoryFrom the start of the movement to confiscate assets from transnational criminals, lawmakers have recognized the overlaps between categories of criminal behavior and organization. As the recent resolutions from the UN Security Council attest, they have seen that one person’s terrorist may be another’s freedom fighter – or organized criminal.
-
-
-
Trafficking in persons. A short history
Author: Kristiina KangaspuntaSlavery has a history dating back thousands of years. It existed in prehistoric hunting societies and has persisted throughout the history of the mankind as a universal institution. Even though slaves have always been subject to physical and sexual exploitation, the discussion of human trafficking from the point of view of exploitation has a much shorter history.
-