By Marwa Alnasaa, Nikolay Gueorguiev, Jiro Honda, Eslem Imamoglu, Paolo Mauro, Keyra Primus, and Dmitriy Rozhkov 

  The emergence of crypto-assets (private digital assets that depend primarily on cryptography and distributed ledger technology for record keeping) has unleashed a plethora of financial innovation that will likely revolutionize the form of money and the ways it is used. These developments create opportunities as well as risks. As noted, for example, by a group of G-20 policymakers, “…technological innovation, including that underlying crypto-assets, has the potential to improve the efficiency and inclusiveness of the financial system and the economy more broadly,” but “crypto-assets […] raise issues with respect to consumer and investor protection, market integrity, tax evasion, money laundering and terrorist financing.” The pseudonymity of crypto-assets (whereby transactions require only digital identities) makes them a potential vehicle for illicit flows, including flows of proceeds from corruption. This pseudonymity is not an intrinsic feature of the underlying technology, but rather a choice made in the design and practice of most currently existing crypto-assets. Whereas cash provides full anonymity and large denomination bills have long been considered an aid for crime and tax evasion (Rogoff 2017, Chodorow-Reich et al. 2020), crypto-assets in their current form make it possible to move even larger amounts speedily and with greater ease, including across national borders (Graf von Luckner et al., 2021). As crypto-assets rapidly gain macroeconomic relevance (International Monetary Fund 2021) and policymakers consider the optimal degree of regulation, it is urgent to bring empirical evidence to bear on the question of whether crypto-assets facilitate corruption. Likewise, it is helpful to explore the extent to which crypto-assets are used to circumvent capital controls, for countries where these are in place, and whether crypto-assets are more likely to gain traction in countries where the local currency has historically not been a secure store of value. There are also potential benefits of the technologies that crypto-assets are based on. In particular, prudently designed central bank digital currencies could offer additional resilience, safety and availability with lower costs. These technologies could also be used to improve transparency and record-keeping for procurement or other payments related to government projects, thereby increasing accountability, and reducing the scope for corruption. Likewise, property and registry systems could be enhanced, reducing red tape, and streamlining processes. However, these initiatives are currently less advanced or widespread than crypto-assets. Empirical investigation of the factors underlying the growing usage of crypto-assets is in its infancy, owing to data limitations. In this paper, we present a simple cross-country analysis drawing on recently released survey-based data. We explore the correlation of crypto-asset usage with indicators of corruption, capital  controls, a history of high inflation, and other factors. We find that crypto-asset usage is significantly and positively associated with corruption and capital controls. Whereas the small sample size and uncertain quality of the data on crypto-assets implies that our results must be interpreted with caution, it is also worth recalling that measurement error tends to reduce the likelihood of finding a significant empirical association; significant results with low-quality data are thus worth paying attention to. With these caveats in mind and considering the urgency of acting before it is too late, rather than waiting for conclusive evidence, we believe that, on balance, our results add to the case for regulating crypto-assets, including know-your-customer approaches, as opposed to taking a laissez-faire stance. 

Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2022. 19p.

By Marcena Hunter and Lynda Lawson

Known for their beauty, coloured gemstones have been used in jewellery, to adorn clothing and in religious ceremonies for centuries. Fuelled by demand from jewellers and investors, the coloured gemstone sector is an international trade linking supply countries in Africa and traders in Thailand and elsewhere in Asia. Today, there are more than 50 source countries and over a hundred gemstone varieties. In 2015, a conservative estimate of the global annual market for rough coloured gemstones – the term used to describe uncut, unpolished stones – valued the sector at between US$17 billion and US$23 billion. Africa is a prominent supplier of gemstones, which are shipped across the Indian Ocean to Asia for beneficiation. Rough coloured gemstones are mined throughout Africa, largely by artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) operators. Small-scaling mining will continue to be a vital source of gemstones for the international market because many gem deposits are small, which means they are short-lived and therefore not appropriate for large-scale mining operations. From Africa, the rough stones are shipped mainly to Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, which are home to long-established, traditional processing centres, and are the main global hubs for cutting and polishing stones for the global retail market. China is also expanding its market share of this industry through increasing use of machine cutting (a process traditionally done manually). Dubbed the ‘ruby trading kingdom’, Thailand is one of the world’s major processing centres for coloured gemstones. The country has been the world’s leading exporter of precious coloured gemstones for the last eight years consecutively,5 with overall exports in 2017 valued at US$1.9 billion. Thailand plays an especially prominent role in ruby and sapphire supply chains. The Thai gemstone industry is known to be heavily dependent on African rough coloured gemstones (see the map); however, official trade records fail to reflect the immense scale of the trade. This is because of the clandestine nature of flows, which are of both an informal and illegal nature. Most African coloured gemstones are moved undeclared through informal channels or are under-declared in official channels. African rough-gemstone traders play a significant role in these supply chains, and have been able to exploit their knowledge of the gemstone industry, as well as their close social and ethnic networks, to buy and export stones from Africa to Asia with ease. In Thailand it is openly acknowledged that the country’s import figures for coloured gemstones from Africa are underreported. For example, according to participants in this research, Madagascar has been an important source of sapphires and other gemstones supplying the Thai industry for over 20 years. After the discovery of brilliant-blue sapphires in the 1990s, numerous gem rushes ensued and Madagascar became the centre of the sapphire universe, but has only recently started to be included as a source country in official Thai trade records. The informal nature of the coloured-gemstone trade, combined with the inherent difficulty in valuing rough stones at the site of extraction, provides ample opportunity for criminal and corrupt actors to exploit and profit from it. This includes large-scale smuggling of stones, resulting in significant underreporting of export and trade figures. Based on Thai trade figures and estimates of authorities and stakeholders, there is a strong likelihood that hundreds of millions of dollars of coloured gemstones are smuggled annually from Africa to Thailand. According to authorities and those engaged in the trade, coloured gemstones may also be being used in money-laundering schemes.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) 2020. 56p.

By Lester Ramirez Irias

This report seeks to understand how communities in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras build and sustain their resilience to extortion, especially in light of state-led anti-extortion measures under emergency regimes in El Salvador and Honduras. It examines how community resilience manifests in environments plagued by violence and organized crime, particularly where gangs operate alongside public security forces under emergency regimes or mano dura (‘iron fist’) policies. Through six case studies, the report explores the varying contexts of community resilience, the factors contributing to its development and long-term sustainability, and the communities' capacity to absorb the impacts of criminal governance, adapt, and transform their environments. The findings reveal a shifting risk landscape for communities. Under emergency regimes, while the incidence of extortion and homicides has decreased, there has been an increase in restrictions on fundamental rights and freedoms. These restrictions complicate community resilience, as the state – expected to provide public security and protect human rights – has become an enabler of impunity. The case studies highlight different forms of resilience, driven by diverse actors such as women victims of extortion, private sector organizations, and foundations promoting sports and community development. While not fully representative of each country, these case studies offer valuable insights into community resilience in high-violence and emergency contexts. Main findings § Emergency regimes have negatively impacted community resilience in El Salvador and Honduras. Each country has unique characteristics in how emergency regimes or ‘iron fist’ measures are implemented, driven by their respective governments. In El Salvador, community resilience is undermined by an emergency regime that has become entrenched as state policy, weakening communities' ability to resist and recover from threats. In Honduras, community resilience faces a dual challenge: criminal networks that once profited from extortion now operate legitimate businesses within communities, making it difficult to identify and manage threats. § Private sector-led initiatives are proving effective. Activities organized by the private sector, such as those by sugar associations in El Salvador and traders in Guatemala, have been effective in building and maintaining community resilience. The private sector’s ability to provide financial resources, along with its organization, leadership and influence over governments, has been crucial in reducing the risks posed by organized crime and transforming environments. However, as seen in the Honduras case study below, mistrust, fragmented initiatives and a highly uncertain context have hindered sustained collaboration between organized entrepreneurs and the police. § Organized sports contribute positively to community resilience. Participation in organized sports has been a key strategy for building resilience in the communities of La Bethania in Guatemala and Chamelecón in Honduras. Sports foster social cohesion by involving not only young people but also parents, coaches and other adults who serve as positive role models. It also offers young people a safe space and instils life values that extend beyond the playing field. § Corruption within the state significantly hampers resilience efforts. Corruption has a detrimental impact on the sustainability and effectiveness of community resilience initiatives. In El Salvador, for example, as extortion by gangs has decreased, police corruption has emerged as a new form of extortion. Unchecked corruption erodes public trust in institutions, allows organized crime to infiltrate state structures and excludes vulnerable groups such as women. § Sexual extortion and impunity obstruct the development of resilience. Under emergency regimes, sexual violence by state actors often receives institutional backing, with arbitrary detention threats becoming commonplace. Victims face severe psychological and social consequences, including stigma and revictimization. The normalization of sexual violence within communities exacerbates these issues, leaving women feeling unprotected and isolated. Mistrust of authorities and fear of reprisals further hinder the community’s ability to organize and respond collectively to such abuses.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime , 2024. 25p.

By Ana Castro

The "Strengthening Resilience Against Extortion: A Community-Led Approach in Central America" project, implemented from January to July 2024, aimed to enhance community resilience against extortion in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. This initiative, led by GI-TOC and its partners, focused on empowering local communities through research, capacity-building activities, and active dialogues, fostering collaboration among civil society, academia, and law enforcement. The project delivered several key outcomes:  Policy Brief: A comprehensive assessment of community responses to extortion under the State of Exception in the target countries. This brief provided detailed analysis and recommendations, addressing the effectiveness of community resilience over time.  Updated Manual: The existing manual on community responses against extortion was enhanced with a new chapter on Victim Support. This updated resource was used extensively in nine capacity-building workshops conducted across the three countries.  Capacity-Building Workshops: Nine workshops were held, three in each country, training a total of 233 participants (157 females, 76 males). These workshops aimed to deepen the understanding of community responses to extortion and strengthen local capacities.  Resilience Dialogues: Four virtual and one in-person meeting facilitated active dialogue among stakeholders. These dialogues led to the development of three anti-extortion mechanisms: an interinstitutional roundtable on gender approaches, recommendations for preventing extortion risks, and an advocacy plan for telecommunication protection laws. Throughout the project, several challenges were encountered, including fear and resistance from community members, lack of updated comparative statistics, and alleged corruption within law enforcement. These obstacles highlighted the need for building trust, ensuring confidentiality, and providing mental health support. The lessons learned emphasized the importance of comprehensive security approaches, applying gender and intersectional analyses, and fostering collaboration between civil society and government. To sustain and enhance these efforts, future support should focus on strengthening community structures, advocating for balanced policies that protect human rights, establishing mental health support programs, and promoting comprehensive security measures that go beyond military interventions. Additionally, continuous training in digital security, mental health first aid, and legal rights is essential for empowering communities against evolving threats. Public-private partnerships and international awareness campaigns are also crucial for addressing the root causes of extortion and violence in the region. By implementing these recommendations, communities in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras can build more resilient and secure environments, effectively combatting the pervasive issue of extortion.  

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2024. 21p.

Edited by Shann Hulme, Emma Disley and Emma Louise Blondes  

The economic and social harms from serious and organised crime (SOC) are multifaceted and wide-reaching, and span the individual, community and societal level. Appropriate targeting of resources to tackle SOC relies upon accurate information about the extent and nature of the phenomenon. However, the hidden nature of SOC means that measuring its size and scale is inherently challenging. The European Commission, DG Migration and Home Affairs, called for a study ‘Mapping the risk of serious and organised crime infiltrating legitimate businesses’ to improve the evidence-base in relation to SOC in the EU.

Brussels: European Commission, 2021. 166p.

UNODC released an Issues Paper on Organized Crime and Gender in May 2022 which focused on gender mainstreaming in the implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. One of the key takeaways from the paper is that gender mainstreaming is not a parallel effort or a “women’s issue” separate from the implementation of the Organized Crime Convention but that it is an integral part of full implementation of the Convention. By not mainstreaming gender into legislation, policies and practices to combat organized crime, this can jeopardize the effective implementation of the convention and be counterproductive to preventing and combating organized crime.

Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2022. 64p.

By Europol

These recommendations follow the 6th Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptocurrencies on 1–2 September 2022. The conference was hosted by Europol at its headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands, together with the Basel Institute on Governance through the Joint Working Group on Criminal Finances and Cryptocurrencies.

The Recommendations are intended to highlight broad approaches and best practices. They are designed to help public and private actors stay one step ahead of those seeking to abuse crypto assets (also known as virtual assets) and services to make, hide and launder illicit money.

The main message is that as the use of crypto assets expands into practically every country and sector, so does its abuse to commit new forms of crime and launder criminal proceeds. Yet with the right tools, capacity and cooperation, the unique characteristics of blockchain-based technologies offer an unprecedented opportunity to investigate organised crime and money laundering networks and to recover stolen funds.

The five recommendations cover:

1. Breaking down silos between “traditional” and “crypto”

2. Regulating broadly and make full use of existing laws 

3. Taking advantage of the blockchain to disrupt organised crime 

4. Raising crypto literacy through capacity building and clear communication 

5. Increasing public-private cooperation

Europol and Basel Institute on Governance, 2022.  6p.

By The International Organization for Migration, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

This second IOM regional situation analysis on trafficking in persons (TiP) for forced criminality (FC) in Southeast Asia's online scamming centres offers practitioners, policymakers and the donor community a concise overview of counter-trafficking initiatives. It encompasses IOM's key figures, achievements, prominent press coverage and publications from the year of 2023, accompanied by recommendations for 2024.

Bangkok: IOM, 2024. 19p.

By Louisa Waugh and Zahbia Yousuf

While there are known threads between criminality and conflict, most interventions to tackle either are rarely based on this knowledge. Therefore, integrating approaches to address both criminality and conflict at once continue to be a struggle.

Focusing on cases in Colombia, Kosovo and Mali, this report aims to move away from the blunt tools of law and order (aimed at rupturing organised crime networks) and counter-terrorism (aimed at degrading armed groups). It recognises the potential of peace agreements and peacebuilding efforts as important vehicles for laying the foundations for sustainable peace.

London: Saferworld, 2022. 40p.

By Transparency Venezuela

  Organised crime and corruption in Venezuela have become a state problem that not only keeps Venezuelans in constant danger, but their effects are already impacting a number of Latin American countries, while the United States and several European nations have witnessed how illegal operations of power groups have infiltrated their financial and real estate systems with dirty money stolen from Venezuela’s coffers. A simple explanation for the complex humanitarian emergency facing Venezuela is that the country was subjected for several years to misguided public policies and decisions by authorities, which in most cases right out aimed to steal large amounts of money from the nation’s Treasury. It was a Grand Corruption scheme,1 with systematic measures that impinged on the entire population. This context was a breeding ground for organised crime, which became stronger with substantial firepower and economic resources, to the point of collaborating—in many cases—with agencies at all levels of authority, including senior officials in the administration. In view of this situation, at the end of this investigation we propose a set of initiatives to combat this evil, which will require forceful and unprecedented actions in Venezuela, such as resorting to the support of international organisations in the search for solutions that have been effective in other countries of the hemisphere, to punish the culprits. This work encompassed a nationwide vision—as opposed to the 2019 Organised Crime and Corruption study2 focused on border issues—which shows the map of criminal organisations, the types of crimes, the regional situation in various states, the role of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), as well as an analysis of the situation of women regarding organised crime and corruption. The most important findings of this new study can be summarised as follows: 1. The existence of at least 9 major organised crime rings in Venezuela, involving more than 13,000 criminal organisations, some of which have ties to policy makers and public officials. 2. Crimes and acts of corruption boast total impunity. 3. The lack of robust public institutions, the dismantling of some of them, as well as the existence of incentives derived from some public policies such as price controls and fuel subsidies, are a breeding ground for misdeeds, crimes, human rights violations and the theft of public funds. 4. Venezuelan migrants are victims of illegal groups. 5. The implementation of a model called garrison state, “banana republic” style, whose main characteristics include institutionalised violence, colonisation of public administration and the incorporation of members of the Armed Forces into the economic leadership of the country. 6. The differentiating aspect of organised crime and corruption among Venezuelan women 4. Venezuelan migrants are victims of illegal groups. 5. The implementation of a model called garrison state, “banana republic” style, whose main characteristics include institutionalised violence, colonisation of public administration and the incorporation of members of the Armed Forces into the economic leadership of the country. 6. The differentiating aspect of organised crime and corruption among Venezuelan women   

Transparency Venezuela, 2020. 135p.  

By Oscar Contreras Velasco

This paper builds on social network analysis and structural balance theory to analyze, with a novel approach, some of the unintended consequences of Mexico’s kingpin strategy on the network of criminal organizations. I use data on violent conflicts between Mexico’s criminal organizations, between 2004 and 2020, from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), and a combination of statistics, social network analysis, GIS, and archival methods to understand the patterns and geography of violent conflicts and alliances before and after the war on drugs. The goal of this paper is threefold: first, to show that the kingpin strategy is associated with the fragmentation of criminal organizations in Mexico; second, to show that criminal organizations developed a set of structurally balanced arrangements before the government waged a war against them and that the kingpin strategy disrupted such arrangements, which led to an increase in the number of violent conflicts; third, I will argue that the fragmentation of criminal organizations also produced a process of clustering of violence, where sets of organizations started fighting each other in specific regions of the country, increasing the levels of violence in those geographical spaces.

Trends Organ Crim (2023), 25p.

By Lene Guercke

This Open Access book explores an issue that has received little attention in human rights research: organised criminal groups (OCGs) as perpetrators of human rights violations, especially disappearances. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining doctrinal legal research with a qualitative study on present-day disappearances in Mexico. Disappearances are a complex human rights violation that impacts not only the disappeared person but also their relatives, who are left in a limbo of uncertainty about their loved one’s fate. Originally part of state-led repression, today disappearances occur in varied contexts, often involving OCGs and other non-state actors. However, disappearances committed by non-state actors are not human rights violations under International Human Rights Law (IHRL), thereby potentially leaving a gap in the legal protection of victims. The book first analyses state obligations and case law involving state responsibility for human rights violations committed by non-state actors and applies the analysis to OCGs. This ‘internal’ legal perspective is complemented by an ‘external’ study based on interviews with human rights practitioners working on disappearances in Mexico, which often involve OCGs. The qualitative study offers a unique perspective on human rights protection ‘in reality’.

The book adds to scholarship on non-state actors and disappearances, and to incipient international legal scholarship on the issue of organised crime and international law. Moreover, the study on Mexico provides a richer understanding of challenges faced by practitioners ‘on the ground’ where OCGs commit human rights violations alongside, or in collusion with, state forces and against the backdrop of an overall failure of the state. The book may be of interest to a diverse audience, including legal scholars and practitioners, human rights scholars in fields such as political science, international relations, or socio-legal studies, as well as funders supporting the work of NGOs in Mexico and similar contexts, and NGOs themselves.

Cham: Springer Nature, 2025, 339p.

By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) . Southeast Asia and the Pacific

  The transnational organized crime threat landscape in Southeast Asia is evolving faster than in any previous point in history. This change has been marked by growth in the production and trafficking of synthetic drugs and cyber-enabled fraud, driven by highly sophisticated syndicates and complex networks of money launderers, human traffickers, and a growing number of other service providers and facilitators. Despite mounting enforcement efforts, cyber enabled fraud has continued to intensify, resulting in estimated financial losses between US $18 billion and $37 billion from scams targeting victims in East and Southeast Asia in 2023. A predominant proportion of these losses were attributed to scams committed by organized crime groups in Southeast Asia. Fundamentally, the sheer scale of proceeds being generated within the region’s booming illicit economy has required the professionalization and innovation of money laundering activities, and transnational criminal groups in Southeast Asia have emerged as global market leaders. Building on existing underground banking infrastructure including underregulated casinos, junkets, and illegal online gambling platforms that have adopted cryptocurrency, the proliferation of high-risk virtual asset service providers (VASPs) across Southeast Asia have now emerged as a new vehicle through which this has taken place, servicing criminal industries without accountability. Against this backdrop, it has become clear that several countries in Southeast Asia, and particularly those in the Mekong, have been targeted as a key testing ground for transnational criminal networks looking to expand their influence and diversify into new business lines. Asian crime syndicates have rapidly integrated new service-based business models and technologies including malware, generative AI, and deepfakes into their operations while opening up new underground markets and cryptocurrency solutions for their money laundering needs. As law enforcement and regulators stepped up their efforts against casinos, illegal online gambling, and cyber-enabled fraud in Southeast Asia, organized crime have hedged and consolidated by expanding operations across inaccessible and autonomous non-state armed group territories and other criminal enclaves in and around the Golden Triangle and elsewhere in the region and beyond. It is now increasingly clear that a potentially irreversible displacement and spillover has taken place in which organized crime are able to pick, choose, and move value and jurisdictions as needed, with the resulting situation rapidly outpacing the capacity of governments to contain it. Expanding on UNODC’s past analyses of casinos, money laundering, underground banking and transnational organized crime in Southeast Asia, the development of this report has required analysis of law enforcement investigations and prosecutions which have provided insights into the region’s shifting threat landscape. More specifically, it has been developed through extensive examination of criminal indictments and case records, intelligence analysis, court documents, and corporate records, as well as consultation with both international and regional law enforcement and criminal intelligence partners. UNODC has also conducted an extensive mapping and analysis of data obtained from thousands of Telegram underground marketplaces, groups, and channels attributed to Asian organized crime networks and affiliated service providers. The report consists of three comprehensive chapters, offering insights into the latest regional developments and trends, underground banking and money laundering, and technological innovation fueling the ongoing situation. It presents information and data points that have not previously been pieced together, representing a unique attempt to further improve understanding of the region’s evolving criminal ecosystem and the convergence of cyber-enabled fraud, underground banking, and technological innovation 

Vienna: UNODC, 2024. 142p.

By The United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights 

This briefing paper sets out human rights concerns arising since early 2021 from online scam operations including their link to human trafficking in Southeast Asia as well as recommendations drawn from international human rights standards. These concerns occur in the context of wide-ranging digital criminal activity such as romance-investment scams, crypto fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling. At the time of writing this paper, the situation remains fluid: hundreds of thousands of people from across the region and beyond have been forcibly engaged in online criminality, States within the region are trying to identify actions and policies to address this phenomenon, while criminal actors are reacting by finding ways to change and relocate their operations, building new centres across the region and upgrading existing compounds. At the outset it is important to acknowledge that there are two sets of victims in this complex phenomenon. People who have been defrauded through online criminality are victims of the financial and other crimes committed by these scam operations. Many have lost their life savings, taken on debt and suffered shame and stigma for having been scammed. On the other side, individuals who are coerced into working in these scam operations and endure inhumane treatment are victims of serious human rights violations and it is their situation that is the focus of this briefing paper. People who are forced to take part in online scams are most often trafficked persons and migrants in vulnerable situations who face a range of human rights risks, violations and abuses. A human rights-based approach to this complex situation means not merely addressing organised crime or enforcing border controls, but seeks to place the victims at the centre of the response, by addressing structural factors, tackling impunity and providing protection and justice for victims of trafficking and migrants in situations of vulnerability. Human trafficking is a recognised criminal offence under international law and many of the practices associated with trafficking constitute violations under international human rights law. Violations of human rights are both a root cause of trafficking and can occur throughout the trafficking cycle. The majority of people trafficked into online scam operations are men, although women and children are also among the victims. Most are not citizens of the countries in which the trafficking occurs, however reports have indicated that at least in some countries nationals are also being targeted. People who have been trafficked into online forced criminality face threats to their right to life, liberty and security of the person. They are subject to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced labour and other forms of labour exploitation as well as a range of other human rights violations and abuses.  This briefing paper is primarily focused on migrants who have endured trafficking and other human rights violations in the context of the scam operations, while acknowledging that the concerns and guidance contained here apply equally in most cases to citizens in this situation. The information in this briefing paper draws on primary and secondary research by the UN Human Rights Office, including victim testimony, as well as the work of the UN human rights mechanisms and information from other UN entities, supplemented by open-source information. While not exhaustive, Section A seeks to draw attention to the many serious human rights issues that result from this emerging phenomenon. Section B offers guidance to States and other stakeholders drawing from human rights standards and offers targeted recommendations aimed at ensuring responses are human rights-based. The briefing paper was transmitted to the relevant States for factual comments prior to publication

Bangkok: OHCHR, 2023. 38p.  

By Hai Thanh Luong

The Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), including five Southeast Asian countries and China, has experienced a significant increase in the cultivation of opium, trafficking of heroin and methamphetamine, and consumption of these illicit drugs. In recent years, the GMS has been expanded considerably as supply, destination, and transit route for illegal drug trade’s networks to and through, particularly when China officially applied ‘Belt and Road’ strategy. This paper reviews historical aspects and current trends in drug production and trafficking in the GMS, with special emphasis on Mekong River areas where China is ‘located’ as the heart of the transition. Some evidence consistent with the ‘supply, destination, and transit route’ arguments is found through locating and mapping drug trafficking networks to connect with China. Finally, this paper calls for some initial recommendations to improve the process of bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the GMS within the scope of Belt and Road Initiative. 

The Chinese Journal of Global Governance 6 (2020) 20–35 

By Anna Sergi  

  The ‘ndrangheta is a mafa group from Calabria, Southern Italy. Considerable eforts have been made to understand the structures and the organisation of this mafa, not only in the province of Reggio Calabria where it originated, but also in other Calabrian provinces and even outside the Calabrian region. Building on judicial data from a recent maxi-trial (Rinascita-Scott) against ‘ndrangheta clans in the province of Vibo Valentia, we build a theoretical approach based on narrative criminology applied to organisational studies of secretive organisations. We fnd a ‘script of narratives’ emerging from collaborators and affiliates' stories – about socialisation, discretion, and accreditation - which reveals how recognition and constitution of ‘added’ ‘ndrangheta clans are thought to work. This script helps us understand the constitutive power of narratives in mafas and critically approach the study of such organisations.

Trends in Organized Crime (2024) 27:389–411 pages

By J. R. Nicolás-Carlock and  Luna-Pla

In recent years, the analysis of economic crime and corruption in procurement has benefited from integrative studies that acknowledge the interconnected nature of the procurement ecosystem. Following this line of research, we present a networks approach for the analysis of shell-companies operations in procurement that makes use of contracting and ownership data under one framework to gain knowledge about the organized crime behavior that emerges in this setting. In this approach, ownership and management data are used to identify connected components in shell-company networks that, together with the contracting data, allows to develop an alternative representation of the traditional buyer-supplier network: the module-component bipartite network, where the modules are groups of buyers and the connected components are groups of suppliers. This is applied to two documented cases of procurement corruption in Mexico characterized by the involvement of large groups of shell-companies in the misappropriation of millions of dollars across many sectors. We quantify the economic impact of single versus connected shell-companies operations. In addition, we incorporate metrics for the diversity of operations and favoritism levels. This paper builds into the quantitative organized crime in the private sector studies and contributes by proposing a networks approach for preventing fraud and understanding the need for legal reforms.   

Trends in Organized Crime (2024) 27: pages 412–428

By Ruggero Scaturro | Giorgio Fruscione

In the Western Balkans, religious radicalization gained international attention in the early 2010s, with around 1 000 people travelling to Syria and Iraq to join jihadist groups between 2012 and 2016. The roots of this radicalization trace back to the Yugoslav wars, the presence of mujahideen networks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Islamist charities spreading Salafi jihadism in the 1990s.

However, not all fighters from the Western Balkans are religiously motivated. Between 2014 and 2021, around 300 people fought in eastern Ukraine, mainly for political reasons, with Serbia being a major source of combatants supporting pro-Russian separatists. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, this trend has resurged, with more individuals reportedly joining mercenary units like the Wagner Group.

Instability in the Western Balkans has also fuelled the spread of organized crime beyond the region, first across Europe and later to other continents. In the 1990s, the Yugo Mafia gained significant media attention in Northern Europe. Meanwhile, violent extremists from the Western Balkans maintain transnational connections through diaspora networks and using online platforms.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2025. 45p.