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UN Symposium Highlights Growing Links Between Crime and Terrorism

UN terrorism symposium in Vienna today highlighted growing nexus between global criminal acts, including drug trafficking and money laundering and terrorism.

The symposium, which brings together more than 250 representatives from nearly 90 countries, comes a decade after the adoption of the Vienna Plan of Action against Terrorism in September 2001, which spearheaded UNODC's assistance programme for countering terrorism.

Yury Fedotov, the Executive Dir.ector of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC),urged participants of the symposium in profits from criminal activity are increasingly being used to fund terrorist acts. Mr. Fedotov also called for boosting efforts to tackle these threats.

"Today, the criminal market spans the planet, and in many instances criminal profits support terrorist groups. Globalization has turned out to be a double-edged sword. Open borders, open markets, and increased ease of travel and communication have benefited both terrorists and criminals."-Mr. Fedotov

Mr. Fedotov is grateful to advances in technology, communication, finance and transport, loose networks of terrorists and organized criminal groups that operate internationally can easily link with each other.

According to UNODC, drug trafficking, transnational organized crime, the movement of illicit firearms and money laundering have become integral parts of terrorism.

For example, opium production in Afghanistan provides crucial funding for the Taliban's efforts, while the activities of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are supported by the cultivation and trafficking of cocaine and kidnapping for ransom.

The gathering is also looking at the plight of the victims of terrorism, and was addressed by Carie Lemack, director and co-founder of a survivor-focused non-governmental organization (NGO) known as the Global Survivors Network.

"The victims of terrorism are so often just seen as figures - numbers which get lost as data. We want to help give the nameless names and project their voices to and work against the deadly, misguided messaging being spread around the world."-Ms. Lemack, Director of Global Survivors Network

Ms. Lemack and the Global Survivors Network's story was recently told in the 2011 Oscar-nominated documentary Killing in the Name, which tells the story of the Network's co-founder, Ashraf Al-Khaled, who lost 27 members of his family in a terrorist attack on his wedding.

Source: United Nations