Inter-Parlamentary Forum of the Americas Forum Interparlamentaire des Amériques Foro Interparlamentario de las Américas Fórum Interparlamentar das Américas

Working Group 2 - The Issue of Organized Crime

Working Group 2 “The Issue of Organized Crime” was chaired by Mr. Louis Tull from Barbados. Mr. Jorge Eastman from the Organization of American States (OAS) acted as facilitator.

The Working Group engaged in a cordial and well-informed debate on terrorism and organized crime, money laundering and their effects in their respective countries. The participants related their experiences in their fight against drug trafficking, money laundering and terrorism with emphasis on finding newer approaches to fight these problems rather than concentrating on current policies that emphasize control
measures. They also highlighted the legislative work undertaken in their countries to combat organized crime and their efforts at ratifying pertinent international conventions.

Recommendations:

The Working Group reached consensus on the following recommendations on the theme of organized crime, drug trafficking and terrorism:

There is a need to gain a better and deeper understanding on the causes and motivations for the actions by terrorists. Causes such as poverty, corruption, bad governance, fanaticism and social injustice and inequality all contribute to the rise in terrorism and thus lead to insecurity .

Human rights should not be violated in the zeal to tackle terrorism.

The countries should consider creating a network of cooperation for sharing intelligence information to prevent these crimes.

Efforts should be undertaken to harmonize criminal law so that differing treatment does not occur that could affect extradition matters.

There should be a concentrated effort to attack the source of terrorism financing.

Attention should be paid to the consequences that disproportionately affect small countries as a result of these strategies to fight terrorism.

Strengthening democratic government institutions is fundamental to the protection of fundamental human rights.

Universal education is critically important for attacking the causes of poverty and consequently the criminal activity that arises from this.

They expressed their solidarity in the reestablishment of dialogue and cessation of hostilities in Colombia. Likewise, there is concern about the negative consequences that affect the neighboring countries through the expansion of this conflict.

The strategies to combat drug trafficking should be constantly examined. With the failure of so-called “zero-tolerance” policies to decrease consumption in developed countries, the difficulties in substituting drug-producing crops by farmers in the producing countries, as well as the weakness in controlling the international financial system to avoid money laundering and the financing of drug trafficking networks, it is necessary to consider other strategies that will allow for a multi-faceted approach to tackle this problem.

A forum should be created to discuss new and novel approaches to combat drug trafficking.

After a lengthy discussion, the Working Group decided to include the following point as an issue to be included in this report, although it did not reach consensus to be included as a recommendation.

Persons deported to their country of origin for criminal activities are often forced to continue such activity in order to survive. The sending country should provide financial resources to the deportee’s country to assist in the rehabilitation and training of deportees.