15th UN Crime Congress: Committee I, Workshop 1 – 26 September 2026

Good afternoon, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. I am pleased to welcome you to the first meeting of Committee 1, of which I had the honour of being elected as the Chair in the plenary this morning. First, I'd like to invite you to elect the remaining officers of the Bureau for our Committee. In accordance with Rule 46 of the Rules of Procedure, this Committee will elect a first Vice-Chair and a rapporteur from among the representatives of the Member States. And I have been informed that Mr. Yunichi Hashimoto has been nominated as Vice-Chair and that Mr. Carlos Sanchez has been nominated as the rapporteur. of this Committee, and unless I hear objection, may I take it that it is the vision of the Committee to elect the nominees by acclamation? Thank you. No objection, so it's decided. I therefore declare Mr. Yuni Chihashimoto from Japan has been elected as the Vice-Chair, and Carlos Sánchez from Peru as the rapporteur of the Committee. On behalf of the Committee, I wish to congratulate Mrs. Yunji Hashimoto and Mr. Carlos Sánchez for their election. And now, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to go to our agenda and organization of work, as adopted by the plenary in the opening session this morning. The following program of work has been allocated to Committee 1. The Committee will hold two workshops organized by the assistance of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Institutes of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme Network. The arrangements for the workshops are as follows: Workshop 1, on building resilient societies, with a focus on protecting women, children and youth; Fostering Engagement, Education, and the Culture of Lawfulness in the afternoon today, Saturday, 26th of September, and in the morning of Sunday, the 27th of September, followed by workshop three on Getting Ahead: Strengthening Data Collection and Analysis to Better Protect People and Planet in Times of New, Emerging, and Evolving Forms of Crime. in the afternoon of Monday, 28 September, and in the morning of Tuesday, 29 September. May I take it that the Committee wishes to approve this programme of work? I see no objection. So the programme of work for Committee 1 is approved, and we will now proceed with our substantive work, starting with workshop 1. Workshop 1, as I said, is entitled "Building Resilient Societies" with a focus on protecting women, children, and youth, fostering engagement, education, and the culture of lawfulness. This workshop has been organized through the assistance of the Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, which is part of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Network. whom I would like to sincerely thank for the preparatory work done. Based on the presentations and the interactive discussions that hopefully will follow, the aim of this workshop is to explore resilience-based policies, practices, and measures for crime prevention and criminal justice, with a focus on women, children, and youth, and measures to ensure their engagement in meaningful participation by embracing a whole-of-society approach. to building peaceful, just, and resilient societies. I would like to highlight that Crime Congress workshops are designed to be of a technical and practical nature, and that the agenda of this Crime Congress has been negotiated and adopted with a view to ensure a close interconnection between the various substantive items and the workshops on the agenda. In particular, this workshop is thematically linked to substantive item 3 of the Congress agenda on advancing innovative and evidence-based crime prevention strategies towards social, economic, and environmental development. And Mrs. Alexandra Martins, UNODC’s substantive focal point for this workshop, will report back on the salient points at the opening of agenda item 3 in plenary. The Committee has before it, for the consideration of this agenda item, the following documents: (a) the report of the Secretariat on the follow-up to the Kyoto Declaration on advancing crime prevention, criminal justice and the rule of law towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; then the working paper prepared by the Secretariat on advancing innovative and evidence-based crime prevention strategies towards social, economic, and environmental development; the background paper prepared by the Secretariat on the workshop entitled “Building Resilient Societies with a Focus on Protecting Women, Children, and Youth: Fostering Engagement, Education, and the Culture of Lawfulness”; and c) the discussion guide for the 15th Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. and the reports of the regional preparatory meetings for the 15th Congress. This work is divided into two meetings, one today in the afternoon and one tomorrow morning. During each meeting, we will have a panel discussion followed by an interactive discussion. The first panel during this meeting will focus on crime prevention, criminal justice in relation to women, children, and youth, and the second one tomorrow morning will address engagement and meaningful participation of women, children, and youth to build peaceful, just, and resilient societies. Each of these two panels will be guided by a moderator. Before we begin our substantive discussion, I would like to kindly ask the presenters and the panelists to respect the time limit assigned to their respective presentations so as to allow for enough time for questions from the audience. I first give the floor to Ms. Alexandra Martins of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to introduce the background paper. So, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, dear colleagues and friends. It is a pleasure to deliver introductory remarks for this workshop on behalf of UNODC, together with our co-organizer, the Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, UNAFEI. The title of this workshop holds two ideas together: protecting women, children, and youth, and engaging them. Women, children, and young people experience violence, discrimination, and victimization disproportionately. They are also too often overlooked as key partners in designing solutions and as active agents of change. Protection is more effective and more lasting when those it is meant for help to shape it. That is also how trust in institutions and a culture of lawfulness are built. Their participation is a right, and it's also a strategic imperative. Resilience is a process that begins with understanding the root causes of crime and victimization: poverty, discrimination, abuse, trauma compounded by exclusion. It means strengthening protective factors at three levels: the individual, the family, and the community. And it means, for instance, recognizing that a child who witnessed violence at home or who is recruited by armed and criminal groups, including terrorist groups, is first of all a child entitled to protection, recovery, rehabilitation, reintegration, and dignity, whose path is not fixed. The evidence is also clear about what does not work. Punitive programs designed to deter individuals from crime do not always reduce reoffending and can make it more likely. What works is already well documented: trauma-informed care that recognizes the impact of adverse experiences; restorative approaches that focus on repairing harm and rebuilding relationships; diversion pathways that provide support without adding stigma; and meaningful support for parents and caregivers. These approaches are most effective when they are rooted in communities with the trust, relationships, and cohesion needed to work collectively and sustain change. This afternoon, with UNAFEI colleagues, we examine these foundations, the policies and practices that prevent crime and protect victims. Tomorrow morning, in the session organized by UNODC, we turn to meaningful participation in practice. Throughout these two days, we will hear from people with lived experiences, practitioners, researchers, government representatives, and young leaders on how participation becomes real through information, capacity, co-creation, change, as well as feedback on what that change has been. Participation also has to be sincere. As a mere formality, it produces fatigue and distrust. Taken seriously, it changes institutions. Women have driven reform against organized crime, corruption, and violence, and their wider presence across justice systems strengthens the fairness of investigations, prosecutions, and judgments. Diversion and reintegration programs have worked better where those subject to them, with victims, families, and communities, helped to design them. Mr. Chair, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues, the people this workshop concerns are not far from this room. Resilience is the capacity to recover from harm and together to prevent it before it occurs. society's resilience to crime and violence can be achieved. And over this workshop, we will hear from people already showing how. I wish us two days of frank, practical, and fruitful discussions. Thank you.

Thank you. And now for the first panel, I would now like to welcome our moderator, Mrs. Kayo Ishihara. who will also summarize at the end of the discussion the key and salient points of the debate. You have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, let me congratulate you on your election as the chair of this committee, as well as on the election of your board members. I'm certain that your leadership will guide this workshop to a success. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, as introduced, I'm Kayo Ishihara, director of UNAFEJ. I've served as public prosecutor in Japan for a few decades, and I was heavily involved in the organization of workshop two of the Kyoto Congress, the previous one, which addressed the topic of reducing reoffending. So it's a great pleasure and honor for me to serve as a scientific moderator today. Tomorrow, I will hand off the moderating duties to Alexandra Martins, our co-organizer from the UNODC. As Alexandra addressed, while the workshop addresses one overarching theme, today's session will address crime prevention and criminal justice in relation to women, children, and youth as a foundation for resilient societies. At the outset, we'll begin with a thematic address by Dr. Robert Sampson, who will introduce the evidence-based concept of collective efficacy and explain how it contributes to crime prevention at the community level. We'll then begin panel one on the topic of resilience and community engagement in the crime prevention context. followed by panel two on resilience-based approaches for vulnerable and marginalized groups. At the end of each panel, the floor will be opened for discussions. Now allow me to introduce our first speaker. It's a great honor and privilege to introduce Dr. Robert J. Sampson, who will be delivering a thematic address that will provide the conceptual foundation for both of today's panels. Dr. Sampson is a professor at Harvard University. His research and teaching cover a variety of areas, including crime and criminal justice, the life course and social change, neighborhood effects, collective civic engagement, inequality, and urban and social structure. Today, he will deliver the thematic address on the promises and challenges of building collective efficacy, during which he will introduce the rigorously researched and evidence-based theory of collective efficacy and its role in crime prevention and building community resilience. For your information, Collective efficacy and related concepts are referred to in the background paper, namely A/cont.241/8, paragraphs 28 and 29. Now, Dr. Sampson, please take the floor.

Thank you very much for that introduction. I'm sorry I cannot be with you in person. I was so looking forward to traveling to Abu Dhabi, and then when it was rescheduled, I have a conflict, so I'm coming to you very early from the East Coast in the United States. I hope everyone can hear me, and if, yes, you have the title slide up. So what I thought I would do today is to give an overview of research on building collective efficacy to prevent crime and give you both a theoretical background for this particular concept and research, but also to discuss some of the empirical foundations that go into it. If I could have the next slide, please. So what I would like to do now is to talk a little bit about the motivation for thinking about communities and crime. And a fundamental fact is the neighborhood foundations of crime and violence, and even criminal justice system involvement. For decades, research has shown a great deal of neighborhood inequality. And I've written about this in my book, Great American City, subtitled Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. And what do I mean by that? Well, the first thing is the fact that fundamental structural features of society such as economic resources, or the concentration of disadvantage, or the concentration of advantage on the flip side, is present in most cities around the world. And you can see it in a way in the map and the cover of the book, in an abstract way, showing the mosaic, really, of the contemporary city in the sense of differentiation across neighborhoods. But this really exists in all cities. and even going back in time historically to ancient cities. So, structural features of society that are important for development vary tremendously by neighborhoods. Can advance to the next? The second key fact is that this is not about just one thing. It's not just crime, health, mental health, physical health, mortality. crime, multiple things cluster together within neighborhoods. I think of this as a diverse social phenomenon. Things go together, in other words, they cluster by neighborhood. And that's fundamental when we start to think about interventions for neighborhoods, because when we intervene and help and build collective efficacy, as I'll talk about, it's not just about one thing, it's about building community health too. Next, please. The other fact is that there's a persistence in neighborhood inequality across time. Things can vary a lot, as I'll talk about in a minute, but the differences or the inequality between neighborhoods tend to be very persistent across time, and I think that's a fundamental fact that we should bear in mind. Next slide, please. So what I'd like to talk about now is the more social organizational features of neighborhoods and the concept of collective efficacy. If you could advance, please, to the next slide. At an abstract level, what do we mean by collective efficacy? Well, I define this as the combination of shared expectations among residents for informal social control. I'll discuss in a minute how we might measure that, but it's the idea of informal social controls and the expectation of action and actual interventions among residents, particularly for children. I believe, and I think the evidence shows across many studies, not just our own in Chicago, that this is a form of communities that is important for understanding and preventing crime. The next slide, please. Now, how might we measure collective efficacy? Well, one way to think about this is to ask people about their expectations, about others in the community. It's not just about what one individual will do. This is where the collective, the efficacy part of it comes in, is what if kids were skipping school? Or what if there was a problem in the neighborhood? Or an institution like a school was about to shut down? When we asked over 10,000 residents in Chicago, what we found is that there's a tremendous variation across neighborhoods. in this concept and in this phenomenon that we can reliably measure. These questions tap the efficacy part of the concept. If you could advance to the next. But we also asked about the relationships among people, whether there was a trust, for example, whether you can trust your neighbors, the shared values. This is the social cohesion part of it. And putting this together defines collective efficacy. And what we found was where there's higher collective efficacy, there's lower crime. And the next slide, please. Could advance, please. Moreover, this is not just a Chicago story. This has been researched in many cities around the world. And one study I was involved with measured collective efficacy using the same procedures in Stockholm. Now, Sweden's a very different country, obviously, more of a social welfare state, and indeed, stockholm and Sweden look very different in that they have lower crime. But as you can see on this chart, as collective efficacy increases, violence goes down in both places. Yes, Chicago is a more violent place, but it's a very persistent relationship between collective efficacy and crime. I think this is important, especially in an international framework, and I don't have time to talk about the other studies that have been done around the world, but this general pattern maintains. Next slide, please. Moreover, it's not just the relationship among residents. Community leaders matter too, and I hope this comes up in the discussion. One thing that we did was to interview leaders in the community in multiple dimensions, whether it be religion, education, business, community organizations, and we measured the ties among the various leaders. So, for example, we asked leaders, who do you go to to get things done in this community? And strikingly, What we found is the communities varied tremendously in the extent to which their community leaders were themselves tied together. And I just give you a very simple example of two real communities in Chicago. I won't name them here, but on the left, you see all these red dots on the left side of that chart. These are community leaders that have no ties to other communities, leaders. And then you see a couple little cliques, whereas on the community that you see in the right-hand part of the screen, there's a dense web or network of ties among community leaders. And what we found is that this too is an important dimension of efficacy, or what you might think of as organizational collective efficacy. And this is related to the collective efficacy of residents. We also found that it was related to lower crime rates, that is a denser connectivity among leaders independent of the characteristics of the community in terms of the compositional features. Next slide, please. A summary of this, and this may look a little daunting, but it's actually, I think, or at least hopefully, fairly straightforward, in that what this theory tries to do is to bring together the various structural features of society, such as the concentration of disadvantage, racial segregation, the organizational dimension, what sociologists and community researchers often think of as the structural part of neighborhoods and communities. And that's important, and sometimes has direct effects on violence, on health in the community. But the argument is that the collective efficacy of communities, again, as I've defined it, the cohesion and the trust among residents and the dense networks of leaders that improve collective efficacy is an important mediator or conduit through which these structural features matter. And so my argument is that we need to be holistic in our thinking and taking into account factors like concentrated disadvantage, racial segregation, but also the power of residents and community institutions to fight crime. Next slide, please. I want to make a second point, and I'll do this briefly, and it's not just about the residents. In other words, the community integration with criminal justice processes is fundamentally important. And one thing that a lot of research has shown, too, is that harsh punishment and what you might think of as abusive policing increase what we think of as legal cynicism or a moral corrosiveness in terms of feelings about the law, about the police, about the courts, about the criminal justice system in general. Next slide, please. A general way of thinking about this, and this is based on work on legal cynicism published in many journals, but also ongoing work. This is a conceptual framework. At both the neighborhood level across the top and the individual level across the bottom, And basically what it's showing or portraying is the idea that abusive policing, harsh interventions by the criminal justice system increase the moral cynicism about law. People feel, well, why should I obey the law, for example, if the police aren't or institutions are not meeting their charge? And there's a cynicism about the police. and law that together define legal cynicism. And what research has shown is that in communities where there's a high level of mistrust about the law or high level of legal cynicism, there's higher rates of violence. And at the individual level, what research is showing is that the accumulation of exposure of children and young adolescents to abusive policing over time, later in their life course, leads to an increase in moral and legal and police cynicism, which in turn, developmentally, is linked to later increases in violence. So we need to bring the criminal justice system into our discussions. Next slide, please. I also want to take a life course perspective and emphasize that Nothing is static. Individuals do not remain the same, nor do communities. And so, we need to bring into the picture here how changes in crime and criminal justice and other large-scale social changes affect life trajectories of crime. Next slide, please. We can see this in terms of the changes that have occurred over society in the last 30, 40 years. If you could advance the slide, please. And I think of this as the social transformation of crime and punishment in the last half century. And I've written about this in my most recent book, Marked by Time, how social change has transformed the life trajectories of young Americans. But I think, as I will show in a minute, social changes have dramatically influenced crime and violence around the world. In the US, we saw a sharp increase in violence in the '60s, '70s, peaking in the 1990s and then falling, a rise in incarceration to a point where it became known as mass incarceration, followed by a decline. But the point here is, imagine a child or an adolescent growing up at the peak of violence in 1990, let's say in Chicago or any other city, and that's what we studied. But imagine A child of similar characteristics, the same race, the same poverty, the same family structure, who came of age a little bit later in this when crime was at its low point or when incarceration was coming down. That's a very different social world. And this is crucial because a lot of our research is focusing on individual and family and developmental factors when we think about resilience, but we need to understand how the social transformation of society alters these trajectories independent of any individual family or even early neighborhood characteristic. Next slide, please. Here, you can see that while the patterns are not exactly the same, social transformation is everywhere. If you look at changes in violence, whether it be in Canada or other countries that have more or less similar systems in the left side of the chart, in other words, thinking about how countries that are commonly compared to the United States look, you can see that in some cases, although the levels are different, there's vast changes. In some, there's declines in crime and then increases and then decreases. And similarly, if you look at the panel on the right, where we have very different kinds of systems such as Mexico or political systems, Brazil, you see patterns that are quite different in many cases. So, for example, you do not see the great crime decline, but you, in fact, see sometimes vast increases in violence. The point is not that every country is the same. The point is that every country is going through social transformations of crime and violence. These changes are central to our understanding of individual, family, and even neighborhood trajectory. So we need to bring these all together. Go to the next slide, please. However, it does not mean that communities are unimportant. or are somehow incapable of addressing these kinds of large-scale changes. In fact, research, and this is not my research, this is research of others. In this case, I am showing some articles by the scholar Patrick Sharkey at Princeton, who has shown how community organizations play a key role. So for example, he found that community-based organizations and funding for these, increases in funding for these organizations, especially those that were aimed at supporting youth, children and youth, were responsible for a good part of the decline in crime in the United States. That's an important finding. Moreover, he's also written about what he calls turning to the community. And this really is consistent with what I'm arguing, is that community-based processes and community-based organizations, collective efficacy, the collective efficacy of organizations, even though it's at the local community level, it is important in understanding changes in crime and changes in crime in society, which, in a way, I believe is a hopeful message, because it may seem like these large-scale changes are overwhelming, but the research suggests that there are things that can be done and that are effective at the community level. Next slide, please. So let me conclude then, really just to reflect for a moment on the implications for global approaches to crime prevention in changing times. Yes, communities are not static, individuals are not static, but There are three fundamental facts I think we need to address here in my last minute. If I can have the first bullet point. The first, and this follows, I think, logically from my presentation, and that is, we cannot forget to mitigate concentrated disadvantage and other structural features of society, whether it be neighborhood resources, the concentration of poverty, the racial isolation, racial segregation. We need to break the neighborhood inequality trap, is the way I think about it. The second, which I've also talked about, but I just wanna conclude by emphasizing, is that at the same time as we're dealing with these structural features in society, we need to build collective efficacy. and really invest seriously in community-based organizations and shared resident activity so that residents are coming together, but not just with themselves, that they are also interacting with institutions of criminal justice, which is my third point. We need to not only build the resilience of communities again and the residents themselves, but it's not all on them. we need to also hold criminal justice institution responsible. Sorry, that's my signal to stop. And so by holding criminal justice institutions responsible, that builds a kind of resistance to this moral and legal and police cynicism that I've talked about. And really, the fundamental fact is that legal cynicism is incompatible with a culture of lawfulness, which is a key theme of the Congress. So again, to summarize, we need to mitigate these concentrated disadvantages. We need to build the collective efficacy, and we need to bring the criminal justice system into the picture with accountability. I hope we can discuss these matters more. Thank you very much for listening.

Thanks. Thank you, Dr. Sampson, for elaborating on the protective effect of collective efficacy. and its role in preventing crime and building resilient societies. I think the presentation demonstrated evidence-based rationale for strengthening and engaging communities. Thank you so much. Now, I would like to go on to our first panel for today's session. And as I mentioned earlier, the theme of panel one is resilience and community engagement in the crime prevention context. We'll begin by looking at efforts to prevent urban and youth crime through interagency coordination and multi-stakeholder partnership approaches. Then we'll consider the roles of communities in reducing reoffending, which is critical component of crime prevention. With that, I'd like to introduce our first panelist, Ms. Anne Champoux. Ms. Anne Champoux has been the Director General of the International Center for the Prevention of Crime. ICPC since 2018. ICPC is a member of the PNI, and it is dedicated to promoting evidence-based crime prevention and community safety strategies. Her presentation is titled Youth Delinquency and Urban Crime Prevention: Community Partnerships and Lessons Learned. Now, Ms. Champagne, please take the floor.

Thank you. Thank you. Could you put the, no, I don't see it. So, dear colleague, on behalf of the International Centre for Prevention of Crime, the ICPC, I'm very pleased to take part in this panel on resilience and community engagement in the crime prevention context. My remarks today will focus on youth, urban crime prevention and community partnership. For over 30 years, the ICPC has worked with cities, communities, and international partners to develop prevention on policy that are evidence-based locally grounded, and built on collaboration. Drawing on decades of fieldwork, research, and partnership tested in complex urban settings, the initiative I am presenting today aims to offer practical, transferable lessons to the collective reflection that this Congress seek to advance. So, briefly, who we are. The ICPC has been found in 1994, and for more than 30 years, we work to mark communities safer from local neighborhood to international institution like United Nations. Supporting local partner with practical tools, training, and guidance. This is our mission. Secondly, researching emerging safety challenge. And third, bringing peoples together to share knowledge through conferences, network, and academic partnership. Our governance reflect that global outlook. Our seven member board brings together leaders from Canada, France, India, South Africa, Italy, Germany, giving the ICPC a broad range of perspective. We have a multidisciplinary team of professionals with backgrounds in criminology, history, political science, geography, international cooperation, and communication. The researcher all have a research ethics certificate from Canada three major research council. One of the ICPC greatest advantage in our ability to work at every level, from local neighborhood to international organization, and turn global idea into practical local action. We do this through strong partnership with government, municipality, NGOs, universities, research center, international organization, and community group. Together, we help cities to develop, implement, and evaluate prevention strategy that respond to local needs while offering lessons that can be applied elsewhere. Our work in Montreal and across Canada serve as a real world laboratory, producing practical tools, methods, models that are now used well beyond our border. Through a 50-member global network and partnership across the UN system, including UNODC, UN-Habitat, UNDP, we turn international commitment into practical, evidence-based solutions for cities and communities. In 2010, the ICPC developed a UN handbook to help communities turn global guidelines into practical local action. It established principles that still guide us today: use evidence, work together, involve communities, and adapt solutions to local needs. In 2020, the ICPC created a urban safety lab with the city of Montreal and the Quebec Ministry of Public Security. Its goal is to improve urban safety governance, helping municipality brings to right partners together. make informed decisions and coordinate their action. The lab focuses on five areas. First of all, partnership, reliable and ethical data, practical support, decision making tools, and space that connect research with frontline experience. That final area led to RESAQ, a network supporting coordinated violence prevention effort for young people across the Greater Montreal. The RESAQ is a network. coordinated by a member of the ICPC team that helps community address different forms of violence, including bullying, sexual exploitation, guy recruitment, and radicalization. It also responds to related challenges such as mental health and local social condition. It works It works as three main parts: sharing useful knowledge, building local capacity, and helping partners coordinate their prevention efforts. The goal is really simple: to create safer, more inclusive communities through lasting partnerships share knowledge and action shaped by local reality. RESAC collaborate, work, connect with several other others ICPC projects. One of these is mapping Montreal youth violence prevention system, which result expected by December 2026. The project looks at who is involved, all services are funded, where young people may be at risk, and where support is missing or inconsistent. The goal is to give the City of Montreal and its partner a practical tool to improve services, close gaps, and build a more coordinated prevention system. We did this research project is designed to support action. With funding again with the Quebec Ministry of Public Security, the lab is studying how young people become involved in criminal network across Greater Montreal. The project combines interview and data to understand all factors such as poverty, family, life, school, and local identity have involved since 2018. As criminal network and recruitment methods change, especially online, our understanding must change too. This research provides an update inside that help RESAC, the lab, and the municipality to keep their prevention work relevant and effective. This report is online, it's only in French though, but it's already online on the ICPC website. The project has three goals: understand what is really happening on the ground, track how the causes and response are changing, and turn that knowledge into practical guidance. By bringing together research, governance, community experience, we create a continuous cycle. Evidence shaped decision, action are tested in the field, and field feedback improve what comes next. That's it for now.

Thank you, Anne, for the presentation. Your presentation addressed urban and youth crime prevention through an evidence-based approach with the example of the Urban Safety Lab in Ruzac. And also, you highlighted the importance of considering the ecosystem in which the crime occurs. Thank you very much. Next, I would like to introduce the second panelist, Mr. Philip Meissner. He is an interregional advisor in the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice section at the UNODC. He was deeply involved in the development of the United Nations Model Strategies on Reducing Reoffending, the Kyoto Model Strategies, serving as a key UNODC focal point and representative during the drafting process. Today, his presentation will introduce the Kyoto Model strategies, particularly focusing on the role of community engagement and community volunteers in reducing reoffending and building resilient societies. Now, Philip, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, madam moderator, Director Ishihara, Honorable Chair, Excellencies, distinguished Delegates, it's my privilege to contribute to this workshop, and while I'd be the first to agree on the importance of preventing crime before it occurs, and as was mentioned already, I will be focusing on the tertiary aspect of prevention in my intervention, namely measures aimed at individuals who have committed criminal offences with the goal of preventing reoffending. Now, this is not only due to the fact that this very topic is at the core of what is the most recent addition to our beloved UN standards and norms in crime prevention and criminal justice, but also because I think this topic strongly resonates with the topic of this workshop on advancing resilient and inclusive societies. Now, to get started, please Allow me, first of all, to recall the tremendous efforts, time, and resources continuously championed by the Government of Japan that went into the development of the so-called UN Model Strategies on Reducing Reoffending. So just recall that their adoption by the UN General Assembly last year was preceded by an intense and often difficult intergovernmental standard-setting process held under the auspices of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. And for me, the broad engagement of Member States and other relevant stakeholders in that process reflects, first of all, that reoffending remains a formidable and shared challenge at global level, an issue that is complex to tackle, an issue that often remains overlooked or unpopular, but an issue that also results in severe human and socio-economic costs if left unaddressed. And at the same time, the prevention of reoffending also touches upon key issues for this workshop, ranging from social cohesion and inclusion, arguably for one of the most marginalized segments in our societies, all the way to community safety and trust in public institutions. Now, the main point of departure of the so-called Kyoto model strategies, as we know, sparked by the 14th UN Crime Congress in Kyoto, was a recognition of the need for and the tangible benefits we gain from doing better in tertiary crime prevention. First of all, the revolving prison door displayed on this slide remains a sad reality in many countries, and far too often, former offenders, in particular those having served a prison sentence, are caught in this vicious cycle of further deprivation, exclusion, reoffending, and reincarceration. Secondly, recidivism prevention is an important agreement for sustainable justice outcomes. The vast majority of offenders will, and rightly so, eventually return to our societies. Lifelong stigma or insurmountable reintegration challenges after having served a sentence do not form part of criminal justice. Thirdly, let us recall that preventing reoffending, and I feel very strongly about this point, is not a contradiction or an alternative tool, but a key foundation for public safety. Efforts aimed at fostering rehabilitation and social reintegration, be it in custodial or in non-custodial settings, directly contribute to reducing further victimization and harm in our communities. Finally, we are also talking about cost efficiency in our criminal justice systems. as lower recidivism rates reduce the pressure on law enforcement, on courts, on prison and probation services, which is often excessive. Let's recall, for example, and that's also a sad reality, that a solid majority of member states worldwide are confronted with prison overcrowding. So in short, I would strongly argue that reducing reoffending is a key investment in societal resilience. because it strengthens the capacity of individuals, of communities, and of institutions to contribute to social stability, safety, and inclusion. The beauty of the Kyoto Model strategies, in my view, lies in the fact that they are structured along six core principles, which are then disaggregated into 18 model strategies. Now we have limited time available, so please allow me to briefly shed light at least on the core principles that the model strategies put forward. Core principle one, as you can see on the slide, focuses on individualised offender management. clarifying, and that should be obvious, that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to addressing reoffending. As opposed to treating offenders as a somewhat homogeneous group, rehabilitation and social reintegration efforts should be tailored to their individual circumstances and be based on individual assessments of risks and needs. Core principle 2 promotes effective use of non-custodial measures. as opposed to using imprisonment as the exclusive or default response to crime. As such, this principle not only calls for diversified and proportionate responses to crime, but also acknowledges that in appropriate cases, community sanctions and other non-custodial measures have proven far more effective to reduce reoffending. Core principle 3, here we go into prison settings where the Kyoto Model Strategy strongly calls for rehabilitative custodial environments. And importantly, this principle is not limited to related programming in custodial settings, but also to safe and decent prison conditions, to constructive relations between prison officials and prisoners, as well as an overall alignment of prison management with UN Minimum Prison Standards. Core principle 4 reiterates the need to address root causes of offending in our interventions intended to prevent recidivism. Obviously, in order to do so, we need to have a proper understanding of the criminogenic needs of offenders and the factors that may have prompted them to commit criminal offences. But as was mentioned, one principle I would like to particularly highlight today is core principle five and its emphasis on holistic partnerships and community support. The message here being that we cannot just leave tertiary crime prevention to prison and probation services, but that we also need the active participation from a much broader range of stakeholders from within government as well as from our communities, social services, victim support agencies, health services, employers, housing agencies, training institutions, as well as civil society organizations and volunteers. All of these players have an important role to play in the prevention of reoffending. And the strong emphasis in the Kyoto Model strategies on multi-stakeholder partnerships And their call for an activation of all relevant actors of society is probably one of the key innovations in this particular standard. And I think this also resonates well with Dr. Sampson's focus on collective efficacy, while also preparing the floor for my fellow speaker, Mr. Imafuku, who will share a very concrete example of a long-standing practice of community volunteers in Japan. Last but not least, core principle six in the Kyoto Model Strategy calls for continuous research into patterns of reoffending and the effectiveness of responses. And let's please recall in that regard that too often we still struggle with measuring consistently and having available quality data on reoffending at national level, let alone at international level. The same obviously also applies for the evaluation of programs as a basis for evidence-based decision making. While I could in my intervention only summarize these core headings, you can imagine how the additional and much more detailed content embodied in the Kyoto Model Strategies provides for a very rich, a very concrete and practice-oriented document. What lies ahead of us now is to move from theory to actual application, to make practical use of this new standard and the guidance that it offers. And speaking on behalf of UNODC, I can say this for us certainly also translates into a commitment to provide technical support to Member States, continuously so in the field of prison management, the treatment of offenders, and the prevention of reoffending. And I would like to take this occasion to invite all of you to join us in this journey. So let me conclude, please, by reiterating my view that reoffending, preventing or the prevention of reoffending, is not only a criminal justice objective, It is actually a resilience building strategy. Thank you very much for your attention, madam moderator.

Thank you, Filip, for the presentation. His presentation elaborated on the Kyoto model strategies with special focus on the core principle five, talking about multi-stakeholder approach and community engagement, which is quite relevant to this panel. Thank you. So I would like to introduce our third panelist, Mr. Shoji Mafuku. He's a leading figure in the field of offender rehabilitation in Japan. He formerly served as the Director General of the Rehabilitation Bureau at the Ministry of Justice of Japan. His presentation will address the Japanese experience and potential of hogoshi and BBS in community engagement. Mr. Imahuku, please take the floor.

Thank you very much for your kind introduction. So good afternoon, all of the distinguished attendees. I'm Shoji Imahuku. I'm a hogoshi and executive director of Japan Hogoshi Federation. Thank you very much for the opportunity to address you today. As Dr. Robert Sampson and co-panelist Phillips from UNODC pointed out earlier, community engagement is at the very heart of successful crime prevention, resistance, and offender reintegration. Today, I will highlight two Japanese examples, Hogoshi and BBS. Hogoshi is also recognized as a good practice in the Kyoto Model Strategy. People rebuilding their lives often face interconnected difficulties involving housing, employment, education, health, life skill, and family relationships. These barriers cannot be overcome by individual determination alone. Communities need to mobilize their social resources and create an environment in which reintegration is possible and sustainable. Another important issue is that people who have committed a crime may be viewed with suspicion and excluded from their community. Reintegration, therefore, requires not only individual change, but also community acceptance. In other words, we need to foster a collective commitment to supporting volunteers and the civil society organization can help by building connections across social boundaries and encouraging residents to actively participate in community activities. These efforts can, in turn, strengthen community engagement. In Japan, A wide range of volunteers and community organizations are engaged in supporting rehabilitation and reintegration. These include Hogoshi and BBS, which I will also discuss later, as well as Women Association for Rehabilitation Aid, Corporating Employers, and Hafei Houses. While these activities involve as many as 200,000 citizens in total. around 24,000 people are currently under probation supervision. I believe the large number of citizens involved, as well as their close collaboration with public institutions, is one of the distinctive features of Japanese approach. In recent years, we have also seen growing fall of society partnerships involving local government, the business community, and other community organizations. Now, let me briefly introduce the hogoshi system. Hogoshi are community volunteers commissioned by the Minister of Justice. Hogoshi provide guidance and support during probation supervision, help coordinate reentry, and promote local crime prevention activities. Hogoshi are unpaid volunteers Although, unnecessary expenses may be reimbursed. Approximately 45,000 hogoshi are active throughout in Japan. Hogoshi collaborate closely with probation officers. Probation officers develop treatment plans based on comprehensive assessment, manage risks, provide specialized interventions, and liaising with relevant agencies. Hogoshi, on the other hand, live in the same community as the people under supervision. Based on the treatment plan, they meet regularly with probationers and provide continuous personal support. Hogoshi engage with probationers as neighbors with genuine care and concern. They focus on building trust, listening patiently, accepting probationers as they are, and encouraging them by sharing practical wisdom from their own life experiences. They can also become positive role models for people who have few supportive relationships in their lives. Most importantly, Hogoshi believe people have the capacity to change and recognize probationers' strengths. Assigning each probationer to an individual Hogoshi also allow for more frequent contact and support tailored to individual needs. Probation officers can help prevent further problems through structured interventions based on the risk-need-responsivity model. At the same time, meaningful encounter with trusted community members, such as hogoshi, can contribute to positive changes in probationers' identities and have a lasting impact on their rehabilitation. In this way, probation officer and HOHOSHI work together while playing different roles. After serving their sentences, some individuals return to community where they have few relationships and little support. Social isolation can increase the risk of reoffending. At the same time, community may focus primarily on individual responsibility and overlook the social condition surrounding offending. Hogoji understand both the strengths and the challenges of probationers and the realities of their local communities. In this sense, they can serve as a bridge between individuals seeking rehabilitation and the community to which they return. Furthermore, Shouldn't we also work with our local communities to create an environment that support rehabilitation? Research on community with lower suicide rate suggests caring community maintain human connections while respecting individual freedom and independence. People seek to understand and accept one another, respecting different backgrounds and way of thinking. while recognizing that everyone has something to contribute and deserves a chance to start again. This community also encourages people to ask for help and share their difficulties, which can help break the cycle of isolation that may eventually lead to crime or delinquency. To this end, Japan has long promoted the nationwide Yellow Feather Campaign, to foster understanding of crime prevention and offender rehabilitation, and encourage citizens to create safe and secure communities. When supporting socially vulnerable young people, it is particularly meaningful for peers of the same generation to stand alongside them on an equal footing. This brings me to BBS, or Big Brothers and Sisters. BBS members are volunteers who support children and young people facing social and personal challenges, including juvenile delinquents. Japan has around 4,900 BBS members, more than half of whom are university students. Through many mentoring activities, such as tomodachi, meaning friendship, and various recreational and educational activities, BBS helps young people build positive relationships and envision new opportunity for their future. One example under the Yellow Feather campaign with Hogoshi and BBS playing a central role is a free kickboxing class led by a former inmate of juvenile training school for local children. Other activities include community flower growing project and educational program for children. Through these activities, people from diverse backgrounds have opportunities to meet, interact, and build meaningful connection with one another. At the second World FOCUS Conference held in The Hague in 2024, a declaration was adopted to designate April 17 as International Day for Community Volunteers Supporting of Integration. The day is intended to raise global awareness of the important role of community volunteers. In this respect, many landmark building in Japan are illuminated in yellow as the symbolic color of the rehabilitation movement. Meanwhile, a film portraying young person rehabilitation journey and his supportive hogashi is being screened internationally. In concluding my presentation, I'd like to introduce again kintsugi, a unique Japanese technique for repairing broken or chipped pottery using lacquer and gold powder. Kintsugi does not simply repair damaged object. It creates new beauty by highlighting the repaired cracks. I believe this resonates with the concept of rehabilitation and reintegration. Today, many communities around the world face loneliness, isolation, and social division. These challenges can make reintegration increasingly difficult. I believe now more than ever is the time community volunteers and civil society organizations to serve as a form of kintsugi, helping to repair broken relationships and rebuild connection with the communities. In this way, we can create a better future, not only for individuals rebuilding their lives, but also for society as a whole. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you very much, Mr. Imahachi, for your presentation. Thank you for sharing with us Japanese experiences on the role of community volunteers such as hogoshi and how they work in supporting rehabilitation and social reintegration. With this, this is the end of our presentations for panel one, but in wrapping up the panel, I'd like to direct a question to the panelists and then invite Dr. Sampson's comments. So the question directed to you is as follows: Dr. Sampson explained that collective efficacy creates a community-level protective effect against crime and victimization. What roles or actions could the criminal justice agencies take to effectively strengthen social cohesion and trust in the community? First, I'd like to direct this question to Mr. Imafuku. Please briefly comment on it.

Thank you for your question. As I mentioned earlier, improving collective efficacy requires the criminal justice agency to work closely with citizen volunteers and civil society organizations rather than acting alone. These actors have different but complementary roles. The citizen volunteer and the civil society organization are particularly well placed to strengthen social cohesion. and build relationships based on trust and mutual support. It is important, therefore, to see them not as resources to be utilized, but as equal partners. Criminal justice agencies should respect their independence and autonomy while providing institutional support, sufficient funding, and public outreach to promote greater understanding of their work. Ultimately, the goal is to build a genuine partnership in which each side makes the most of its strengths. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Next, Philip, please.

Thank you very much, madam moderator. I would probably come back to principle five of the KMS on enhancing multi-stakeholder partnerships as a response to your question. I think there are two sides to it, though. One is for prison and probation services to open doors in what is naturally either a closed, semi-closed, or restricted environment to let non-governmental stakeholders, community stakeholders, in to provide services as much as is possible, but to also involve them in policy development. The other side of it is reaching out, how I would call it, meaning reaching out through campaigns, outreach programs, to raise public awareness of what the work of preventing reoffending is all about and to do so in a language that is understood by a non-expert audience, and I think this public buy-in is extremely important. I came across various jurisdictions where there was strong resistance in the community when it came to, for example, establishing a halfway house. And it took community dialogue, it took patience and conversations to explain why this is also in the interest of the community to have such a halfway house. I also would like to just make a brief point about what sometimes is being put out too easily, I think, as a criticism towards prison and probation. You should be more open to ask for support. I came across many countries where prison and probation services have reached out to government, to other line ministries, to the private sector, but the initial response was lukewarm. Because other government entities have a lot to do, they do not automatically buy in to provide services in prisons that they already need to provide in the community. So what I would like to say here is that it's also very important to have a senior policy making signal towards other parts of government that it is also part of their responsibilities to support the prevention of reoffending. Thank you.

Thank you. Anne, please.

Thank you, madam moderator. I would say it's not an easy question. I would say in our experience, the key is working from consultation to real co-creation. Communities are more likely to trust institution when they are involved in shaping priority and solution, not just ask for feedback after a decision is made. Bringing criminal justice and agency, community organization, and frontline actor together to define goals and action, an action plan, sorry, creates a real shared ownership. In that trust, it's built over time. through consistent engagement, not one of consultation that share ownership, is what ensure social cohesion and help turn collective efficacy into lasting protective factor against crime and victimization, I would say. Thank you.

Thank you, panelists. Now I would like to invite Dr. Sampson for the comments, and due to time constraints, I would like to request to make it very concise. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. Let me say, I enjoyed the presentations very much. I think there's a common message that's coming through here. Let me just say a few words on the three remarks that were just made. on the HOGOSHI system, which is fascinating. I agree on the volunteers aspect and the idea that there needs to be autonomy. And what I would see in that is the notion that we need to give, again, community residents, but also community leaders outside of the criminal justice system a say. And I think that's a connective thread across the presentations. Secondly, the presentation on reoffending and recidivism, I couldn't agree more. There's kind of two sides to the coin, right? Prevention of crime before it happens, but then what happens when someone is an offender and or is defined as an offender and has a criminal record? And that relates in part to what I was saying about legal cynicism and the need to repair some of the harm that's been done and think about how do we involve the community in preventing recidivism. I very much agree, it's not just a criminal justice problem. One aspect is restorative justice. We need to bring the community into it. It's not just the victim and the offender, it's the larger community beyond that particular dyad. Third, co-creation was just mentioned, and trust among residents is really produced when there's a say that's given to those residents. It's not just a top-down system. And let me just briefly say a couple things about this. One is, you know, one concrete thing we can do is listen more to community residents about how they define problems. It's not just about crime rates. People care about much more than crime. They care about things like green spaces and vacant housing. And in New York City, there was an interesting intervention actually by the mayor's office in criminal justice that we've read for so long about how police departments are taking crime reports, so-called CompStat in New York. They produce what was called NeighborhoodStat, which was data and information that was produced by residents on things like safety and what they defined as things that they felt would be important. And so that's a way to give voice to community members. There's a research apparatus for that, but there's also a conceptual need to take that seriously. And furthermore, I want to emphasize again, the community-based organizations and the leadership in multiple dimensions, whether it be education, religion, churches, for example, in Boston, much of the crime decline, at least according to solid research, is how the clergy in Boston provided, in a sense, an umbrella of legitimacy for crime prevention efforts by interacting with community members, interacting with the police, in a sense, being part of that process of holding the criminal justice system to be responsible rather than an invading force of the police. The community really only perceives the legitimacy of the police if they feel, again, that the actions are just, and that they're following proper procedures and are recognizing the norms of the community. So I think these all tie together. There's various concrete interventions that I think have been proven to be effective, that bring community residents, community leaders and the criminal justice system together. I won't get into the specifics. We don't have time. But I very much agree with three remarks that were just made by the presenters, and I hope that the Congress takes them seriously and implements them in their report. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Dr. Sampson and Zappalot. The wrapping up discussion highlighted the importance of community engagement and also the role of criminal justice. Now, I would like to yield the floor to the chair for the floor discussion.

Yeah, thank you. We still have some minutes for questions from the floor, and please limit any questions or interventions to three minutes or less, so there will be adequate time. for all who wish to speak to do so. As you know, we have a certain order. We first give the floor to member states, then to international organizations, then NGOs, and then individual experts. Who would like to request for the floor? I see Mexico. You have the floor.

Thank you, Chair, distinguished delegates. The Government of Mexico recognizes that young people should not be regarded solely as recipients of crime prevention policies, but as key actors in building peace. Inequality, school dropout, precarious employment, and weakened community ties can increase the exposure to violence and recruitment by criminal groups. Prevention efforts must therefore expand educational employment. cultural and sports opportunities, as well as opportunities for community participation. Consistent with this approach, Mexico is implementing a policy known as Jornadas por la Paz, roughly translated as P Days, Peace Days, which between September 2025 and July 2026 recorded the participation of 1,600,000 people, of whom half of them were young people. These initiatives bring broad communities closer to employment and educational opportunities, addiction prevention services, sports and cultural activities, and social programs. Peace education is another central component of our policy for young people. It is aimed at developing the skills needed to identify tensions, engage in dialogue, exercise rights, mediate, and build agreements before differences escalate into violence. Within this framework, educational activities have been developed on the culture of peace, positive conflict resolution, social prevention, and youth participation. Our work on peace education also incorporates specific measures for women, children, and adolescents, including services for the prevention of and response to violence, as well as health, education, and protection services. Schools-based interventions have also been developed to address dating violence, sexual harassment, addictions, mental health, emotional management, and culture of peace. The objective is to strengthen the resilience of communities, not only by protecting populations in the situations of heightened vulnerability, but also through their effective participation in the decisions and actions that transform their communities. Mexico's experience is based on the understanding that security cannot be built exclusively through responses to crime. Prevention requires reducing conditions of vulnerability, expanding opportunities, strengthening families and communities, and bringing institutions closer to the population before risk factors turn into violence. Mexico, therefore, promotes territorial, participatory, and evidence-based informed prevention. one that recognizes young people as protagonists, incorporates the specific needs of women, girls, and boys, and strengthens shared responsibility between government and communities in order to build lasting conditions for peace. Lastly, we would like to thank all the panelists for their very, very interesting presentations. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for this intervention. And I would like to ask speakers to stay close to the microphone so that everybody can hear you. I see next speaker on my list, I have a speakers list, is the European Union and then the US, and then Greece, of course. Oh, Ghana, sorry.

Do I have...

Yes, you have the floor, EU.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have the honor to speak on behalf of the European Union and its member states. Let me begin by thanking all panelists for their insightful presentations, and let me stress that the European Union welcomes the organization of this workshop. We thank the UNODC and the UNAFEI for placing this important issue before the Congress. We fully support the focus on building resilient societies through crime prevention and criminal justice approaches that protect, empower, and meaningfully engage women, children, and youth. For us, resilience begins with prevention. Peaceful, just, and inclusive societies cannot be built only through responses after crime and harm has already occurred. They require sustained investment in human rights, equality, education, social cohesion, and institutions that address the root causes of crime, violence, and victimization. Women, children, and young people are disproportionately exposed to violence, exploitation, discrimination, and other forms of victimization. This includes cases where they are simultaneously perpetrators and victims of crime. If they fall victims to crime in the EU, their right support and protection is ensured by a comprehensive legal and policy framework, recently strengthened by the revision of the Victims' Rights Directive adopted in June this year. At the same time, they are not only rights holders in need of protection, they are also indispensable partners in shaping effective and sustainable solutions. Their meaningful participation, including the right of children to be heard, improves the legitimacy, responsiveness, and long-term effectiveness of crime prevention and justice policies. Violence against women remains one of the most widespread and persistent human rights violations worldwide, including in Europe. In the EU, it is estimated that one in three women has experienced physical violence, sexual violence, or threats by adulthood. In this context, we adopted two years ago our first ever directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence, building on the principles and objectives of the Istanbul Convention. The directive strengthens prevention, protection, access to justice and support for victims, while ensuring prosecution of perpetrators and contributing to a more coherent and effective response to violence across the Union. It will move from words to action and bring about real change on the ground. The directive also introduces new criminal offences, including acts of cyber violence. For children in particular, protection from violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect is a fundamental human right. Children should be able to grow up in a safe and supportive environment, free from all forms of violence and exploitation. Protecting children therefore requires prevention, early identification of risks, timely intervention, and sustained support throughout the child's development. An effective child protection system must be integrated, coordinated, and child-centered. and understood as a shared responsibility across society and institutions. The EU therefore supports approaches that are people- and victim-centred, trauma-informed, gender-transformative, and child-sensitive. Such approaches should have an interdisciplinary outlook and strengthen access to justice, psychosocial support, education, and reintegration, while addressing the structural inequalities and exclusion that heighten vulnerability to crime and violence. Building resilient societies requires a whole-of-society approach, grounded in human rights, equality, participation, and the rule of law. Governments, justice institutions, schools, health, and social services all have a vital role to play. The EU remains committed to working with all partners to advance peaceful, just, and resilient societies in which women, children, and youth are protected, heard, and empowered as agents of positive change. We thank you again for convening these important discussions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. And next on the list is the United States. You have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to start by commending the organizers of the workshop and the panelists who presented up to this point. I look forward to hearing the rest of the presentations. I want to start with a sort of a broad observation and then focus on some specific themes, some of which relate closely to the interventions this afternoon, some of which I would say are complementary. that we think are important and that we would hope would be reflected in the report that comes out of the workshop. So first, the broad observation. As the U.S. reviewed the background materials for this workshop, we couldn't help but feel that the discussions, to a certain extent, have lost their way. So we've piled on so many either loosely related concepts or broad social concepts that are really beyond the mandate of this body, that we're running the risk of losing sight of the real issues, all under this very broad umbrella of prevention. So discussions of root causes, citing climate extremes as a cause of crime, reliance on overbroad frameworks like the Sustainable Development Goals, may serve some agenda, but it really doesn't go to the heart of what's actionable and what's reasonable for this kind of body to take on. So turning to some more specific observations, the background paper calls for a focus on generating data and using empirical evidence about crime and judging the impact of different preventive strategies. And that's certainly something we'd like to see emphasized, and it was interesting to see Director Champeau's, to hear Director Champeau's presentation about RESAC, if I remember the name, and looking at data to develop targeted preventive strategies in municipalities or localities in Canada. But I'm also hearkening back to the intervention of many member states in the plenary, where there was a focus over and over and over, not just on crime at the community level, but on the terrible impact on our societies of transnational crime. And there was a whole list that many speakers added: narcotics trafficking, alien smuggling, et cetera. And I think that we have to look at preventive measures that really go to those issues and that have a practical impact, and that the stakeholders and the policymakers who come around these tables really have a chance of working on and bringing to results. We have to invest in measures to disrupt the operations of these criminal groups, and we have to make sure that our investigators, our prosecutors, our judiciary is effective. I don't know if Professor Sampson is still on, but I would ask him if abusive policing arguably creates what he called legal cynicism. I would imagine that the failure of efficacy of the criminal justice system to successfully pursue crimes in the first place does in itself lead to loss of trust or what he called legal cynicism. So he also mentioned the role of clergy in Boston, and one thing that we would like to raise is in the community-oriented approaches that we've heard shared from Japan, from other places, I think it's important to look at the role that faith-based groups can play, either faith organizations as implementer of these programs, of these interventions, of these community engagements, or where they're not faith-based groups, but the community groups being willing to work with and work closely with these important social entities. So we hope that that kind of nuance to the community engagement would be reflected in the report. We also think it's very important, and this has come up a few times, to focus on recruitment. So how can recruitment to gangs, to cartels, to organized crime groups be deterred? That's an important part of prevention because it cuts off the pipeline of new personnel for the groups in their work. And then to close, because I want to, of course, make sure that there's enough time for all the speakers, the complementary issues that were not as squarely presented, but we really do have to look at the other kind of harder side, how financial measures how financial crime investigation, confiscations, and other things can disrupt the operations and prevent further crime by these groups, and how tools that deter and disrupt their operations, like sanctions, like designation as terrorist organizations, can interfere with their work and prevent further crime. So we hope that the Member States look at these measures as well. And again, we have to, as we're tempted to look at these broader social issues, which may have importance in other fora, we have to make sure that first we're hitting those basic elements of prevention and criminal justice responses. Thank you.

Thank you for the statement, and as you asked twice for proper reflection in the report, I can assure you that we will do our best to reflect the full spectrum of opinions that we hear here today in the room in the limited scope of the report. And before we maybe hear some reactions, the last speaker on the list for the moment is Ghana. You have the floor.

Many thanks for the opportunity. Ghana, realizing the need to build resilient society, the Ghana Prison Service has adopted a concept called Think Ghana Prison Service 360 degrees. And the concept breaks it into three tiers, where we have a first tier which brings lawfulness to the doorstep of society. So the Ghana Prison Service under its Public Relations Department has established a team that goes to schools to address young people on the things not to do to get into conflict with the law. And to get to broader majority, they also visit the churches so that they can engage all of these agencies at the prevention level. And beyond this, it has also established a television station where the young people are telling their own stories that resonates with their peers, and this is also doing very well. Ghana, as a nation, has also come to accept the fact that there is always the need to build that gap between the offender and then the justice agencies. And so, whilst the prison service is engaging on education of the public asset who, the justice delivery agencies too are collaborating to ensuring that any gap in the chain is addressed at the very least. This approach recognizes that people who have offended remain capable of change and that rehabilitation is an essential component of public safety. But it also goes beyond the public safety to ensure that The people we see as the offenders are also able to address their issues, to live happy lives, because a balance between the two is the only way to guarantee that we will all live happily and the reoffending will also reduce. Under the 360, there is a component which is the third tier, which tries to address internal problems within the prison walls. And a lot of activities are taking place to ensure. But for this discussion, I would like to emphasize more on what happens after the incarceration, because a little research in Ghana has shown that you can have inmates who are really ready to change, but the environment on release may push them into reoffending. And so we have come up with an intervention where we are engaging the churches again. So on release, churches will adopt some of these offenders, take them to a halfway place where they take them to two weeks orientation, and then link them back to the churches they belong to. So in the community, it is the pastors who live in their communities who will help them transition into lawful citizens. Above all, Ghana also identifies that Education in general is crime preventing, and so the emphasis is to ensure that all these things we are doing at the community engagement place finds its way into the school curriculum, where children will begin to appreciate the fact that they have to exercise wrong judgment. So we are using education to develop judgment, self-confidence, employability and civic consciousness. In Ghana, education is therefore central to both prevention and rehabilitation. Overall, the balance is to ensure that correctional systems, the question correctional system must ask should be not only what offense did this person commit, but also what capability can we develop before this person returns to society? And in doing that, women and girls are also, and children are not left in the loop. We also believe that culture of lawfulness is also part of it. So in a drama series that we are doing with the drama clubs across the countries, We are trying to do playwriting and acting that will depict some of the things within the cultural concept. And we believe that when we are able to do that, even as children, they'll begin to appreciate the need for love, honesty. And together, we will build a society that is more peaceful. I thank you very much for this opportunity. And we are hopeful that the deliberations will go on. with the in-depth analysis and walk home with new things that we will apply back home. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for these comments. As we are running out of time, I unfortunately have to close the speakers list at this point of time, but of course, we will come back to maybe a broader discussion with the floor after the second workshop. And at this point of time, I'd like to thank the panelists of the first workshop and also Professor Stempson in the US for their participation. Thank you very much, and we turn to the... Sorry. And of course, before we turn to the second workshop, I'd like to give again the floor to the moderator.

Thank you, Chairman. Now we would like to move on to our second panel for today's session. Panel one focused primarily on communities as protective environments. Panel two will examine resilience through a more targeted lens, focusing on vulnerable and marginalized population, special attention to women, children, victims, and survivors. So I would like to introduce our first panelist, Dr. Salome Waimu Muhia-Biakwo, CBS. She's a principal secretary of the State Department for Correctional Services in Kenya's Ministry of Interior and National Administration. In her current role, Dr. Muhia-Biakwo is responsible for institutional and community corrections in Kenya. Her presentation is on resilient approaches for vulnerable and marginalized groups in Kenya. Dr. Baelke, please take the floor.

Thank you very much, Chair, moderators, fellow panelists, your excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Thank you very much for allowing me to make this presentation on gender-based justice people-centered, community-based rehabilitation. For starters, the Republic of Kenya, under the leadership of President William Ruto, is very committed to gender-based justice and people-centered, community-based rehabilitation. In a very special way, I wish to acknowledge the invaluable support by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency as well as UNFAP in assisting Kenya in enhancing community corrections in Kenya through the Community Probation Volunteers Program, that is the Hogoshi program. Resilience is built when justice protects relationships within the entire ecosystem of a country and not only institutions. The measure of justice is not only whether we punish wrongdoing, but whether we modify offending behavior through effective rehabilitation and leave families, people, and communities safer and stronger. In this regard, it is important to personalize treatment and encourage inclusive participation, both of victims, families, youth, and communities, as well as consider the goal of reintegrating through education, livelihoods, and belonging. The guiding principle in Kenya's probation and aftercare is that every offender can and they do actually change. The strongest gender responsive sanction can be the one that interrupts harm without destroying protective relationships. In Kenya, the correctional services comprises of Kenya Prison Service and probation and aftercare. Probation and aftercare takes care of approximately 62,000 offenders serving community corrections. Out of these, approximately 16.9% of them are actually women and girls. This translates to approximately 10,465 within the financial year of 2025-2026. For children and young people, resilience means preserving developmental trajectories. It means that we try to divert when appropriate by moving children away from formal justice processes, Then secondly, we keep development on track. That is, protect schooling, family relationships, psychosocial development, and positive peer community connections. Third, we hold accountability without labeling. That is, we use proportionate, child-sensitive responses that address behavior and harm without needlessly creating lifelong stigma. And finally, we build the support system. We mobilize families, schools, social services, churches, volunteers, and community structures around child-specific reintegration programs. The community involvement in offender management is very key to community protection and corrections. The Kenya's Community Probation Volunteer model, that is the Hogoshi model, extends professional probation practice into households, neighborhoods, and hard-to-reach areas. In this regard, we focus a lot on the community, respected community leaders to work with the offender in the process of reintegrating them and resettling them. In this regard, it is very important to get accurate information in a social inquiry and information verification. Additionally, the hogoshi or the community probation volunteers engage in mentorship, pro-social modeling, and encouragement of the offender. They also, in conjunction with probation officers, engage in supervision and compliance of day-to-day support and encourage reintegration of the offender into the family, the churches, the livelihood, and community links. The community-based, community, sorry, I'm moving faster than the book. The community-based corrections can scale up. We take cognizance of that fact. And the probation and aftercare department or unit in Kenya Currently, 61,907 clients are being supervised under the various programs, that is probation orders, community service orders, and aftercare. Of these, 97.9% have satisfactorily completed their supervision. Of this as well, over 200,000 reports have been generated for the courts and penal institutions. This is very important because increasingly Kenya is opting and preferring community corrections as opposed to custodial sentences. In terms of data. Approximately 62,000 offenders or persons in conflict with the law in Kenya are actually the ones under custody. So you can see almost an equivalent number are serving community corrections, and Kenya is really emphasizing on alternative justice systems as well as alternative dispute resolution as opposed to incarceration. From offense-type-based assessment to risk, need, and responsivity, evidence-based assessment and classification, Kenya is refining the risk, needs, responsivity approach so that supervision addresses criminogenic needs while responding to social and developmental conditions that determine whether reintegration can succeed. In terms of risk, we Consider how much structure is required. We match intensity with the assessed risk and avoid over-supervising the lower-risk people. Then we assess the need. What must change? We address the criminogenic needs and critical stability needs, such as housing, employability, family relations, and psychosocial well-being. And then finally, we address the responsiveness. How will this person be engaged to lead to change? Matching the level of intervention, adapting to gender, age, culture, trauma, disability, motivation, and learning style. There is greater emphasis on accountability, and this is stronger when communities can see the repair. this extent, probation and aftercare in Kenya does have a directorate of victim protection. In this regard, the officers do listen to the victim voice and prepare victim assessment, impact assessment reports and statements. We engage in mediation and restorative processes which can restore participation and recognition of harm. We are enhancing this particular aspect this particular component by working with the victim until they are sufficiently healed. And in this regard, the probation and aftercare in Kenya has increased the employment of psychologists, counselors, and psychiatrists so that this particular component of the victim voice is enhanced. Additionally, we focus on community benefit. Community service orders turn accountability into visible contribution while keeping suitable clients connected to the society. And then finally, we have emphasized on social crime prevention. We do have the Social Crime Prevention Directorate. This is cascaded to all stations across the country, which amount to 148 stations. The station level sensitization, school talks, legal aid clinics, talks in churches, as well as partnerships to address risk before it becomes repeat offending. Scaling resilience requires the whole justice ecosystem to move together. This implies that there is legal and policy coherence, professional capacity, digital and data investment, community partnerships, sustained financing, and research and learning. When you combine this and, of course, emphasize on multi-sectoral approach and multi-agency approach, we see in Kenya that there will be greater emphasis on community corrections as opposed to custodial sentences. I thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Beako. for sharing with us the Kenyan experience on gender-based and child-focused justice, with a lot of emphasis on community-based rehabilitation, evidence-based. Thank you. And I would like to move on to the next panelist who will participate online, Ms. Santoni Desebit. She's a senior expert public prosecutor of the Office of the Attorney General of Thailand, where she has served as a prosecutor since 2001 and has made significant contributions to efforts to address violence against women and children, including playing a key role in Thailand's participation in negotiations on the United Nations Model Strategies and practical measures on elimination of violence against children. Her presentation is on engagement of children and youth in the justice process and reducing re-victimization of gender-based violence victims in Thailand. Now, Ms. Santini, the floor is yours.

Okay. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. Greeting from a very rainy Bangkok, Thailand. So it has been raining heavily since yesterday for more than 30 hours, and this in my live weather report. So let's begin with my presentation. I would like to start with the story. about one young man. So because when we talk about children in contact, okay, next slide, please. Yeah. Okay. When we talk about children in contact with the justice system, usually we often think first about the victim who need protection, but children either enter the justice system in many different way as victim, witness, or even the children in conflict with the law. So, may I begin with one young man's story? He was convicted of murdering a police officer at the age of 17. And when you hear that, you may imagine someone who are really dangerous and frightening. But when I first saw him at a vocational and training center, I saw something different. I saw a young man with a constant smile, always chosen to lead his group. and who had completed a bachelor degree in political science with a second class honor while he was in the center. This young man was part of the Thailand Integrated Rehabilitation Program for Children and Youth, inspired by Her Royal Highness Princess Patcharapitiyapa, who has served as a public prosecutor for more than 15 years. The program applied the sufficiency economy philosophy to help young people develop critical thinking, take responsibility, and become self-reliant. And he told me that this program helped him think more carefully, recognize his own value, and make decisions based on reason. And just two weeks ago, I just received a wonderful news that he has successfully competed for and obtained a position as a court officer, which is a public servant in Thailand. And after Her Royal Highness passed away, he wrote the letter expressing that Her Royal Highness saw us not as children defined by our mistake, but as young lives still worthy of hope. She taught us that the law exists not only to punish, but to offer those who have stumbled the opportunity to rise again. And I think his story remind us that something fundamental, that a shy mistake does not have to become a lifelong misfortune. With effective rehabilitation, it can become an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to build a different future. So what makes a rehabilitation effective? Next slide, please. In Thailand, the Juvenile and Family Court and Procedure Act provide a special legal framework for children and young person. The Criminal Procedure Code as safeguard during investigation. Our court and Office of the Attorney General also have issued guidelines reflecting international standards. Next slide, please. The international standard include the UN model strategies and practical measures on the elimination of violence against children in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice, which Thailand is proud to actively help develop. Next slide, please. For children who have committed an offense, our laws allow authority to develop individualized rehabilitation program. And the word individual life matters enormously. Since every child has different interests, abilities, and aspirations, therefore, no single program can work for every child. Next slide, please. So one successful example I would like to mention is the Soft Serve Model. It's a soft serve project from Krabi Province. This project is an innovation, won an innovation award winner in 2025, a competition organized by Office of the Attorney General in cooperation with the Observation Office under the Ministry of Justice. The idea of the project is simple. Children should have a voice in designing the rehabilitation part that fits them, like soft serve ice cream. where everyone can choose the different flavor that they like, a different path forward the future. Next slide, please. Through partnership with the private sector and local communities, young people develop practical skills, like cooking, electrical work, carpentry, barbering, And one particular meaningful outcome is a child trained in barbering and have enough skill, has an opportunity to volunteer in hospital to provide haircut to patients. This means a lot because he told us that it made them feel like they had real value and that they could contribute something useful to others. This sense of self-worth become a powerful protective factor that they would like to begin their life again. Next slide, please. The integrated rehabilitation and reintegration program launched by Her Royal Highness Pattarakitiyapa Indrayong in 2019, when she was a chief public prosecutor there, drawn on three principles of the sufficiency economy philosophy: moderation, reasonableness, and resilience, grounded in knowledge and virtue. As for the young man I described earlier, these principles became the way of his future, of living. Next slide, please. And I think, okay, I think it's a different slide. The result of the, okay, sorry. Maybe, okay, okay, thank you very much. Okay, so it's a different number, but it's okay. The result of the project lead to the slightly decreasing of the number of the reoffending. And you can see that from 2019, it dropped. The percentage of the reoffending stopped, I think, quite extensive number. Okay, next slide, please. There's also sport is another powerful tool. I think it's an old song that say that sport is a medicine. It purify the minds and it bring out our humanity. This song is very popular in Thailand, and I wish I could sing to you, but fortunately, i don't have time. Next slide, please. Can I turn to the slide with the Muay Thai? Muay Thai dress, the BBG club. Sorry, before, before. Yeah. Before this? Okay, okay, this one. the spotlight, yeah, this one. So I would like to mention a bit about the Bausch Be Good Club, the BBG, which is under Her Royal Highness' initiative. This sport provides young people in the vocational center the opportunity to train as a professional athlete, particularly in table tennis. And these young people, after they release, they became a professional sport person. And I think is reflect what the UN General Assembly resolution 24/170, which recognize that sport can counter prejudice, change perception, and improve behavior. Okay, next slide, please. Thank you. But I think that if we want to prevent children from entering the justice system in the first place, we must act earlier, supporting children at risk because of family instability and other vulnerabilities. So here comes the, I think this example led by Thailand Institute of Justice, or TIJ, in partnership with the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and the Office of the Attorney General. Every Friday, a storytelling and mindfulness activities, which conduct online to reach children regardless of distance. They develop communication skills and inner resilience, because with mindfulness, we can pause before we act. And sometimes, the moment makes all the difference. Next slide, please. Let me turn to another issue that mean deeply to me as a prosecutor. This matter is how the justice process treat the people who came into contact with it. I have seen victims of gender-based violence becomes reluctant to pursue justice because it cost them so much. They must report, they must be interviewed, give evidence. and often recounting traumatic experience again and again, where the justice process is not thoughtfully designed, it can cause further harm. This is why Nitiwat Institute has worked closely with the UN Women and TIJ to provide training for prosecutor and multidisciplinary professionals on responding appropriately to violence against women and girls. Next slide, please. We are also working with UNODC, the Norwegian Center for Human Rights, and the New Zealand Police on investigative interviewing, which include the PEACE model. A trauma-informed approach requires understanding that vulnerability can affect how person respond to questioning, and in some cases, can affect memory itself. So recording the interview is especially important. When done properly, a victim does not have to recall the same trauma at every stage of the process, greatly reducing re-traumatization. Next slide, please. And beyond the peace program training to build up law enforcement capacity, we're also working to amend the criminal procedure code so that the principles are embedded in our legal framework, not left to individual practice. Next slide, please. And this is bring me to my final point. I believe a justice system should not be designed around the institution that operate it. It should be designed around the people who experience it. For child rehabilitation, it means that allowing the child to participate in deciding their own plan. And for victims of gender-based violence, it means a process that is trauma-informed and gender-sensitive at every stage. And for all of us, I think it means designing justice based on evidence and what we know works, not what is our assumption. So it means to me that we have to listen. We have to have the justice system that learn, and we have to have the justice system that respond to the real need of the people itself. And above all, I think the justice system that deliver justice should be accessible, human-evident based, is important and responsive to everyone. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Santani-san, for your presentation. She touched upon several initiatives by Her Royal Highness Princess Bachelokitiyapa. I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest condolences on the passing of Her Royal Highness, who had made extensive contributions to the UN Crime Programme, particularly connection with the Bangkok Rules, and who had demonstrated strong support for UNAFE, TIJ, and the PNI as a whole. May her soul rest in peace. And back to Santanisan's presentation. She provided good practice, practical example of engagement of children and youth in the justice process and supporting child at risk in the tight context. And also, I would like to underscore how she addressed supporting victim of gender-based violence using evidence-based investigative interview activities and others. Thank you. And I would like to move on to our third panelist, Ms. Aninia Jokinen from HEUNI. She's a senior program officer at HEUNI in Finland. Her work focuses on human trafficking, labor exploitation, forced marriage, gender-based violence, and the protection of vulnerable populations. Her presentation will address protecting at-risk children and victim-centered methodologies for survivors of human trafficking. Ms. Jokinen, please take the floor.

Thank you so much, madam moderator. Good afternoon, dear distinguished delegates. Many thanks for the opportunity to present at this workshop. So, HEUNI, or the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control, affiliated with the United Nations, is an independent research and policy-making institute functioning under the administration of the Finnish Ministry of Justice in Helsinki, Finland. Our strategic focus areas include human trafficking and forms of exploitation, social sustainability in supply chains, criminal justice processes, and gender-based violence and other forms of violence. We have recently concluded projects that relate to youth criminal exploitation. as well as forced marriage under our umbrella of work against human trafficking and gender-based violence. If we go then to the theme of collective efficacy, that helps to prevent human trafficking and related phenomenon by enabling communities to recognize risks, support vulnerable individuals, act collectively against exploitation. In the Nordic countries, so in Northern Europe, those are generally high trust societies, but this has been challenged by recent trends showing increased recruitment of youth into organized crime groups, as well as challenges regarding forced marriages. Human trafficking, youth criminal exploitation, and forced marriage often thrive in environments where vulnerabilities go unnoticed. Institutions are disconnected, and community members do not know how to respond or to identify warning signs and to support vulnerable individuals and then refer them to appropriate services. A multi-agency cooperation can be seen as an institutional form of collective efficacy, where different actors coordinate their efforts to prevent exploitation. So by strengthening these community networks and informal social controls, we can reduce opportunities for traffickers to recruit, groom, and exploit victims. The first example I'm giving relates to criminal exploitation of youth. We had funding from the Nordic Council of Ministers to do a scoping study called Between Victimhood and Offending, which looked at the kind of nexus between victimhood and offending, links between youth criminal exploitation and human trafficking in the Nordic countries. This report is available on HEUNI's website, and there's also a policy brief. So the report focused on the Nordic countries, and it was based on academic research, official reports, media sources, as well as consultations with Nordic criminal justice practitioners and other relevant actors. And it has been drafted in handbook format to facilitate easy access for different types of practitioners. So children may be recruited into and exploited in criminal activities through the abuse of vulnerabilities, such as young age, adverse childhood experiences, and neuro psychiatric disorders, as well as, for example, financial or other dependence. Also, issues such as family dynamics, broader living conditions, and societal factors, such as young people living in disadvantaged areas, further intensify the risk of becoming exploited in criminal activities. The phenomena is also very much gendered, and girls and boys may be vulnerable to different types of recruitment and then have different roles in these criminal networks, though both face significant risk in terms of exploitation. And the exploitation often occurs without evident use of force. But we've also identified some local solutions that fit well into the themes of this workshop. So, Nordic countries have developed approaches at national, regional, and local levels to prevent this youth involvement in organized crime. For example, in Sweden, regional councils facilitate cooperation between police, social services, youth services, schools, and NGOs, which allow tailoring the approach according to regional needs and regional trends. There are also these kind of municipal level cooperation between schools, social services, police, and lesser services, which has been identified to identify youth at risk of committing crimes and who are showing early signs of criminal behavior. And then there's social intervention groups that enable individualized work with youth at high risk of offending. Another example I'm giving relates to forced marriage. So in the European context, forced marriages often occur in the context of migration and among migrant or minority communities. Mended EU anti-trafficking directive identifies exploitation deriving from forced marriage as a form of human trafficking, which then obliges all the EU countries to make sure that their human trafficking legislation covers this phenomenon. It is very complex and sensitive of nature, and there's a low level of awareness among victims on their rights and on available support. So still too few victims seek help or are identified as victims of human trafficking. They may be more willing to use low threshold services offered by NGOs, crisis centers, or health care services, and few victims are willing to file a police report because of lack of trust and fear of consequences, for example. So last year we concluded an EU funded project. which enhanced support to victims of forced marriage. We developed a toolkit for enhancing support to victims, as well as a best practice booklet and checklist for individuals assessing forced marriage situations. And there was also a report on legislative approaches that our colleagues at the University of Jaida produced. These materials are all available in Finnish language, in Spanish, in German, and Catalan, as well as in English, and the checklist is available in 18 languages. These materials were developed to strengthen the capacity of various professionals to identify, refer, and support victims of forced marriage and related exploitation. We had partners from NGOs that were directly assisting victims, and we learned from them in terms of best practices. So we found out that increasing community engagement and leadership in tackling such practices as forced marriage is vital. This means that we need to strengthen dialogue and awareness on forced marriage, and then that facilitates better access to support services. During the project, close cooperation and workshops in schools, in local schools, were identified as a key way to build resilience among youth and to increase their awareness on the phenomenon of forced marriage, but also on their rights. The partnering NGOs in Germany, Spain, and Finland reached hundreds of students via these workshops. Our Irish partner recruited community navigators to engage with local communities and to initiate a dialogue about forced marriage and other such practices. The identified best practices placed a strong emphasis in ensuring safety for the victims, providing them with access to therapy, and enabling empowerment, as well as building resilience in communities. And this also was seen to help reduce the risk of re-trafficking. So, in conclusion, Preventing exploitation requires resilience at the individual level, but also at the family and community levels. Strong communities and coordinated local action are key protective factors against exploitation. Building trust, strengthening networks and multidisciplinary cooperation, and empowering communities to take floor reduces vulnerability to exploitation. Trust between communities, NGOs, as well as authorities also helps to increase reporting and information sharing and allows better access to support. and this allows also making exploitation harder to conceal. Ultimately, preventing human trafficking must be closely linked to broader efforts to prevent various forms of harm against children and young people, and to ensure that they are aware of their rights, but also where to seek support if they encounter risks. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Anning Yang. Her presentation provided with us an example of where collective efficacy prevents human trafficking based on empirical researches. And human trafficking is a serious offense committed by the organized crime groups. So I think this gives some response to the points raised in panel one from the floor. And also, I would like to highlight her victim-centered methodologies with focus on forced marriage cases victims. Thank you so much. And I would like to move on to the third, fourth panelist, Dr. Dawn Bechney-Thomas. Dr. Dawn, Bagnert-Thomas is a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice Sciences and the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Illinois State University. Her research focuses on gender-based violence, victimology, women's incarceration, and restorative justice. She serves on the Executive Committee of the World Society of Victimology, where she represents the organization in its consultative role with the United Nations. Her presentation will address building survivor-informed approaches to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls through strategic partnership. Dr. Dawn Beikner-Thomas, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon, Your Excellencies, distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. I am grateful to our colleagues at UNIFACE for this opportunity. I've been invited to discuss the materials I presented at the past two UN Women Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Global Leaders The 15th UN Crime Congress occurs in the aftermath of 2 historic milestones. First, the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The UN Secretary-General's report on the 30-year review and the collective work of UN Women bringing Beijing+30 into action help us to take stock on where we are currently and what we need to do in the movement forward. Second, in 2025, we celebrated 40 years since the adoption of the UN Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power. Not only has this document been a pillar for victims for four decades, it is a product of strategic partnership. In the debates prior to the UN General Assembly endorsing the declaration, the World Society of Victimology, among other civil society participants, contributed to the preparatory work which was conducted within the framework of the sixth and seventh congresses on the prevention of crime and treatment of offenders held in Venezuela and Italy. In this pivotal moment, we must strategize together to determine what comes next. UN Women’s Beijing+30: From Words to Action provides practical guidance on ending and preventing violence against women and girls. One of the action priorities, filling data gaps on violence against women and girls, is one that requires collaborative, sustained efforts over time, such as those made possible with strategic partnerships. There are many available resources linked in the presentation. Please reach out to me or our colleagues at UNIFACE for a copy of the slides. In any approach that we take, we must center victims. They have an integral role in our action plans. Victims bring vital lived experience that helps shape more effective, compassionate reforms. Their input ensures that strategies address victim needs and system gaps. We must also center young activists. From 2021 onward, UN Women has done this with Generation Equality. Youth 2030, the first ever UN system-wide strategy on youth, guides joint UN action for and with young people globally. Generation Equality, an initiative in conjunction with the Abu Dhabi Congress, aims to amplify the voices of young people in our reform efforts. Strategic partnerships provide approaches that are multisectoral, involving governments, civil society, community members, and other relevant stakeholders. The best approaches are intergenerational, intersectional, and inclusive. As a starting point. We must mainstream gender in curriculum, both at universities and in training academies that educate police officers, civil servants, and those working on the front lines with survivors. Much of the guidance for best practices working with victims is available online, including the UNODC handbook that is linked here. The other images are examples of victim-centered projects that I have completed with students. Project one, we held listening sessions with clients at a women's reentry or aftercare organization. You will note that many women in prison have extensive histories of trauma and abuse. They helped identify priority areas, and the students found materials and resources. At the culmination of the semester-long project, we invited the clients and staff to campus, and the students presented their collective work. The second project, which was similarly focused, we joined forces between students in the United States and those at Fahrschule Kiel, Germany. University research centers should prioritize applied projects in which faculty and students partner with local communities and governments to lift victims up and support them, to also resolve gender equality issues. The image from the slide is from FLACSO in Quito, Ecuador, and it shows the implicit diversity of disciplines available on all college and university campuses. Our approaches to end violence against women and girls involve elements of health and human sciences, communications, urban planning, technology, criminal justice, and women and gender studies. We need to draw on this diversity and build interdisciplinary teams. We also need to make students key partners and compensate them with funding, academic credits, and make it possible for them to use research as culminating experiences, such as master's thesis or doctoral dissertation projects. Through my role as a professor, I've collaborated with many students on victim-centered research. This is an example of a strategic partnership involving local government, law enforcement, civil society, and our university. We wanted to understand sexual assault reporting, and particularly why it was so low in our community, but we didn't want to potentially retraumatize victims. So we interviewed sexual assault practitioners regarding their perceptions, and we asked what strategies could we implement for improving reporting among victims? What we also learned is that it was very important for us to use the networks that are available in the community to be able to affect change. The woman here is a survivor activist who works in advocacy, and the project became her master's thesis. As a final example, I was asked to develop a project examining women's needs and their experiences in jail or pretrial detention within the community. I involve students in all aspects of development and planning for the project. We know how important it is to use evidence-based approaches and to let research guide our policies and strategies. In the project, we found that women had little access to counseling or other mental health resources, though most of them had been victims of sexual assault and other forms of violence. As a result of the project, a community partner in aftercare was able to establish a weekly group within the jail where women had a safe space to discuss their victimization and learn strategies for healing. The project also had a component with psychology graduate students who developed materials for use in the jail, things like self-guided journaling activities, identifying triggers related to substance use, and resources on healthy relationships. We also helped form a community group focused on coordinating efforts in reentry and aftercare across the community. We know that addressing victims requires a multifaceted approach. Although the examples I provided focus on my positionality in university and civil society sectors, each of us in this room has the capability to develop strategies to keep victims at the center, young people as key actors in our movement forward, and bring Beijing+30 to action. Next month, UN Women will commemorate the 15th anniversary of Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces Global Initiative, and I look forward to continuing our conversation there. Thank you.

Thank you, Dong, for your presentation. Her presentation highlighted with a focus on violence against women and girls. and its victims and survivors. And she touched upon many important approaches, such as victim-centered approaches, multifaceted approaches, multisectoral, multi-stakeholder approaches, and inclusive approaches with a number of examples. And this serves to strengthening community response to victimization. Thank you. And with this, that brings us to the end of our presentation from the panelists. And I would like to thank all the panelists for their outstanding contributions. And now I would like to yield the floor to the chair.

Thank you very much. And as I said before, we now reopen the floor for questions and comments. Do I see any requests for the floor? So it's a long day, apparently. Also encourage NGOs and experts to raise questions. So this is not the case. As I said, it was a long day, and of course, we continue this workshop tomorrow. Then I give the floor back to our moderator for final conclusions, final words. Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman. First, again, I'd like to thank all panelists, participants, and organizers, and I share a few thoughts on this afternoon's discussion. Recalling the thematic address delivered by Dr. Sampson, we saw how collective efficacy offers an evidence-based rationale for the importance of community engagement in crime prevention, serving as a foundation for resilience. By addressing the issues of social cohesion and trust in communities, his presentation also highlighted how law enforcement practices inconsistent with the rule of law can undermine a culture of lawfulness and public support for the justice system. Panel one continued to explore the theme of community engagement by considering evidence-based approaches to urban and youth crime, deepening our understanding of how Kyoto Model strategies promote community engagement to reduce reoffending, and hearing about the use of community volunteers, including hagoshi, in Japan. Finally, panel two focused on the intersectional nature of vulnerability, specifically in the context of women and children, noting their status, sometimes dual status, as victims and offenders. The panelists emphasized the need to ensure child-sensitive, gender-responsive, and trauma-informed treatment in criminal justice practices, including avoiding secondary victimization. A common theme was the importance of community engagement and support in providing services to meet the specific needs of vulnerable and marginalized individuals. Ultimately, addressing the needs of vulnerable groups is fundamental to resilience, and incorporating their perspectives into crime prevention and criminal justice policy plays an important role in this process. I'd also like to point out that fostering a culture of lawfulness generates trust in the justice system and the rule of law, and victim-centered and gender-responsive approaches are critical to strengthening this trust. To wrap up, building resilient societies can only be achieved by working together through whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches, drawing on the unique capacities of various players, in particular by drawing on the strengths of our peoples and their communities. Thank you. So this comes to an end of my wrap-up, and I again would like to yield the floor to Chair.

Yeah, thank you very much. And this brings us our meeting today to the end. And again, I'd like to thank you very much, all participants, all panelists, in person or online, for their participation. And yeah, the committee will continue with this workshop tomorrow at 10:00 AM here in this hall. And yeah, thank you very much once again, and for today, the meeting is adjourned.