The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has passed a resolution that acknowledges the role of the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Institute (UNICRI) as a valuable component of the UN system and contributor to the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The resolution encourages UNICRI to continue its efforts to advance evidence-based and data-centric approaches to address the global challenges of transnational organized crime in its many evolving dimensions and to promote the rule of law.
The milestone resolution was tabled by the Vice President of ECOSOC and Chair of the Management Segment, H.E. Ambassador Paula Narváez Ojeda, Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations, and facilitated by the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations. It is the first such resolution from an institutional level on the work of UNICRI since UNICRI was established in 1968.
Passing the resolution followed an oral briefing to ECOSOC by UNICRI Director, Antonia Marie De Meo, on 7 June 2023, where she presented an update on the work of the Institute and highlighted its major achievements in 2022. This briefing to ECOSOC, UNICRI’s parent organ, followed Decision 2022/338 in June 2022, in which the Council invited UNICRI to provide an oral report on its work every two years during the Management Segment of ECOSOC alongside and on equal footing with other research and training institutes of the United Nations.
Ms. De Meo expressed her appreciation to ECOSOC Member States for the opportunity extended to UNICRI to join its sister research and training institutes – the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC), and the United Nations University (UNU) – during the Management Segment. She highlighted that this oral briefing allows UNICRI “to share insights from our extensive research and training in the field of crime prevention, justice, and the rule of law and to feed these insights into broader UN system-wide processes, such as the 2023 SDG Summit. It also allows us to demonstrate how we can support Member States through specialized research and tailor-made programmes.”
With the passing of this resolution, UNICRI looks forward to deepening its engagement within the chambers of ECOSOC and to exploring new partnerships with all Member States through its action-oriented research and evidence-based programming in the field of crime prevention, justice, and the rule of law. UNICRI will deliver its next briefing to ECOSOC in June 2025.
Read the ECOSOC Report
Report to Ecococ 2022, Chinese
Report to Ecosoc 2022, English
Report to Ecosoc 2022, Russian
