UNIS/CP/498
19 July 2004
Preparatory Meeting for the Eleventh United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice to take Place in Seoul
VIENNA, 19 July (UN Information Service) -- A two-day preparatory meeting, being held to plan the workshop on “Measures to combat computer-related crime” begins its work today in Seoul, Republic of Korea. The meeting is being hosted by the Korean Institute of Criminology (KIC) which was established in 1989 in response to the increasing concerns about crime, with a view to formulating criminal justice policies in Korea. A collaborative agreement between KIC and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime was signed today by the President of the KIC, Jae Sang Lee.
The workshop is one of six workshops to be conducted within the framework of the Eleventh United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, which will take place in Bangkok, Thailand, in April 2005. Today’s meeting will consider the format and documentation for the workshop on “Measures to combat computer-related crime”.
The preparatory meeting will also take into account the recommendations of the four regional preparatory meetings for the Congress, held this year in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Beirut and San José. In addition, it will discuss the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe and consider the feasibility of negotiating a new international instrument on preventing and combating crimes involving information technologies.
The Eleventh Congress will provide an opportune forum to highlight the need for developing more concerted strategies to curb the problem of computer-related crime at the national level and to consider such measures as criminalizing of the misuse of information technologies, developing jurisdictional rules and other procedural provisions, strengthening specialized capacities of law enforcement personnel through training to respond effectively in the investigation of transnational computer-related crime, and extending and improving cooperation among States to prevent and control computer-related crime.
The General Assembly, in its resolution 58/138 of 22 December 2003, endorsed the provisional agenda of the Eleventh Congress and decided on the topics to be considered by the six workshops. In recommending a workshop on measures to combat computer-related crime, the Assembly recognized that the proliferation of information technologies and rapid developments in new systems of telecommunication and computer networks have been accompanied by the abuse of those technologies for criminal purposes, as the opportunities for criminals to exploit and target such systems have increased significantly.
The need to adopt measures to combat computer-related abuses more effectively has been acknowledged by the General Assembly in various resolutions dealing with combating the criminal misuses of information technology and, most recently, the creation of a global culture of cyber security and the protection of critical information infrastructures.
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