New UN campaign sees transnational organized crime as $870b a year business
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on July 16, 2012 launched a new global awareness-raising campaign emphasizing the size and cost of transnational organized crime.
Profiling the multi-billion-dollar-a-year threat to peace, human security and prosperity, the UN campaign shows the key financial and social costs of this international problem through a new public service announcement video and dedicated fact sheets for journalists.
The UNODC says transnational organized crime has a turnover estimated to be around $870 billion a year and it profits from the sale of illegal goods wherever there is a demand adding “These immense illicit funds are worth more than six times the amount of official development assistance, and are comparable to 1.5% of global GDP, or 7% of the world’s exports of merchandise”.
Available at unodc.org/toc, the campaign is being rolled out through online channels and international broadcasters with the aim of raising awareness of the economic costs and human impact of this threat.
The multi-language campaign which consists of a 30- and 60-second public service announcement, a set of posters, a series of fact sheets and various online banners, offers an insight into today’s core criminal areas such as human trafficking, the smuggling of migrants, counterfeiting, illicit drugs, environmental crime and illegal arms.
“Transnational organized crime reaches into every region and every country across the world. Stopping this transnational threat represents one of the international community’s greatest global challenges”, UNODC Executive Director, Yury Fedotov said in a statement.
“I hope that the media will use UNODC’s campaign to highlight exactly how criminals undermine societies and cause suffering and pain to individuals and communities,” he added.
With an estimated value of $320 billion a year, drug trafficking is the most lucrative form of business for criminals, the UN agency said noting that counterfeiting, a $250 billion a year business, is also a very high earner for organized criminal groups.
The UNODC stated that human trafficking brings in about $32 billion annually, while some estimates place the global value of smuggling of migrants at $7 billion per year.
The environment is also exploited: trafficking in timber generates revenues of $3.5 billion a year in South-East Asia alone, while elephant ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts from Africa and Asia produce $75 million annually in criminal turnover, it added.
By Ekow Quandzie
Watch the new UNODC campaign on transnational organised crime