Strengthened cooperation, innovation vital in fighting transnational crime: UN chief

10:58, 13 April 2010

UNITED NATIONS. April 13. KAZINFORM UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on Monday called for strengthened global cooperation and more innovation in the battle against organized crime, including the emerging danger of cyber-crime, warning that it threatened world peace, security and vital economic development; Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

"Organized crime poses a threat to international peace and security like never before," Ban said in a message to the 12th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Salvador, Brazil, delivered by John Sandage, Officer-in-Charge of the Division for Treaty Affairs in the UN Office on Drugs and Crime ( UNODC), UN officials said here.

"It is a major impediment to the realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," he added, referring to the ambitious targets set by the UN Millennium Summit of 2000 to slash world poverty, hunger, maternal and child mortality and vastly increase access to education and health care -- all by 2015.

"Sharpening our legal weapons is a must," he declared, urging all States to ratify and implement the 10-year-old UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its three additional Protocols, which aim to suppress trafficking in persons, especially women and children, the smuggling of migrants, and the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms and ammunition; Kazinform cites Xinhua.

See www.xinhuanet.com/english2010/ for full version

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