15th UN Crime Congress: Plenary meeting 3 – 26 September 2026

protection of whistleblowers and witnesses, asset recovery, and the strengthening of institutional capacities. Given the interlinkages between terrorism, illicit arms and drug trafficking, and corruption, which calls for a comprehensive and coordinated response, Burkina Faso reaffirms its determination to continue all effort and call for an international cooperation and increase technical assistance particularly for development countries finally it reiterates its commitment to strengthening cooperation with States parties and unodc to ensure the active effective prevention of all form of crimes hence is pledge for action on coordinated and structural action on capacity building and experience sharing for the upcoming five years.

Our next speaker is Her Excellency, Ms. Stephanie Hubig, Federal Minister of Germany.

Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Germany, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the government of the United Arab Emirates for hosting this important UN Congress on crime prevention and to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for its thorough preparations. Some of the greatest challenges we face stem from the unprecedented rate at which technology is evolving. We must keep pace with these developments if we are to effectively combat and, just as importantly, prevent new and increasingly digital forms and methods of criminal activity. And yet, as we bring our crime prevention and criminal justice systems into the digital era, we must remain committed to upholding rule of law principles, explicitly enshrining concepts such as safeguards, Human oversight, transparency, traceability, explainability, personal data protection, due process, fair trial, and effective review in the Abu Dhabi Declaration is, in our view, of paramount importance. This reflects a fundamental premise. The digital transformation and artificial intelligence must serve the interests of criminal justice. but cannot come at the expense of human rights or the rule of law. Moreover, the declaration rightly emphasizes that fighting crime cannot be a matter of criminal prosecution alone. Prevention must be an equally important pillar of effective crime policy. Our goal must be to engage with vulnerable or potentially dangerous individuals systematically, in cooperation with local structures and at an early stage before they become offenders. We must take prophylactic action wherever possible and appropriate and respond with criminal prosecution only when necessary, applying discernment, proportionality and rigor. This is especially true where young people are concerned. Germany has vigorously advocated for a declaration that highlights the importance of the special prevention model and alternative measures in juvenile justice systems. We believe that including young adults in this context sends an important signal. A further crucial point is ensuring the participation of women at all levels of crime prevention and criminal justice. Women's full and equal participation is not just a matter of quality. It also helps to create institutions that are more effective, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of the people they serve. We also welcome the growing awareness within the international community of the importance and urgency of combating environmental crime, with its devastating impact on security, health, nature and environment, and of the need for even greater international efforts to overcome these challenges together. UNODC plays a key role in all of these areas. It brings together insights from the research community, practical experience and proven prevention approaches from around the world. At the same time, UNODC can support the global community in developing and implementing effective and tailored prevention measures. We believe that civil society also has a key role to play in this process. Civil society is an invaluable partner in crime prevention and criminal justice. It brings expert knowledge to the table, fosters victim protection and victim-centered perspectives, boosts the resilience of communities, and helps to ensure that criminal justice also considers the need of those affected by crime. A top priority of the federal government is preventing and combating sexual violence. In the period from 2026 to 2031, Germany commits to adopt and implement legislation strengthening protection for victims of sexual violence. in particular through safeguards against digital violence and the creation of new criminal offenses for sexually explicit deepfakes, image-based sexual abuse, and cyberstalking. Mr. Chairman, this Congress is a valuable opportunity to reaffirm our shared determination to act. The declaration sets out a common strategic framework translating the deliberations and commitments of this Congress into sustained international cooperation and concrete measures for the years ahead. In doing so, it offers an important contribution to a modern policy on crime, one that is preventive, evidence-based, sensitive to individual circumstances, yet firm where necessary, but always within the bounds of human rights, the rule of law, and the principle of proportionality. For its part, Germany remains committed to the constructive pursuit of these goals as a dependable partner in multilateral cooperation on fighting and preventing crime. Thank you.

I now give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Jin Soo Lee, Acting Minister of Justice, Republic of Korea.

Mr. President, distinguished delegates, it is an honor to take part in UN Crime Congress as a Vice Minister of Justice of the Republic of Korea. I sincerely thank the government of United Arab Emirates and UNODC for convening this Congress. Today, crime is changing rapidly. Artificial intelligence and deepfake technologies are being used for fraud and identity falsification. Virtual assets allow criminal proceeds to move and to be concealed across borders. Online fraud, trafficking in persons, money laundering, and organized crime are increasingly connected across jurisdictions. Crime now moves faster and farther than ever before, yet criminal justice systems still operate within national laws and jurisdictions. Bridging this gap is a critical challenge. At the same time, our response must always respect the rule of law and human rights. We must hold offenders accountable, take away the profits of crime, protect victims, and ensure due process. These goals go hand in hand. For these reasons, the Republic of Korea supports the Abu Dhabi Declaration and its focus on emerging forms of crime, asset recovery, international cooperation, and victim protection. The Republic of Korea is working to build a criminal justice system that protects society, respects human rights, and keeps pace with evolving crime. We are strengthening coordination among agencies and improving our investigative capabilities against sophisticated and organized crime, including financial and virtual asset crime, online scams, and voice phishing. On drug-related crime, we are taking a comprehensive approach. Along with enforcement and punishment, We are strengthening treatment, rehabilitation, prevention of reoffending, and victim protection. The Republic of Korea is also strengthening our ability to trace and recover criminal proceeds, guided by our simple principle, no one should profit from crime. Recently, we introduced a non-conviction based confiscation allowing criminal proceeds to be recovered where criminal proceedings can no longer be pursued. We have also introduced a system to preserve electronic evidence upon request. And as crime becomes increasingly digital, we are advancing the use of artificial intelligence in criminal justice. International cooperation is more important than ever. Offenders cross borders. Evidence is often located abroad. Criminal proceeds move rapidly through multiple jurisdictions. The Republic of Korea has expanded cooperation in extradition and mutual legal assistance while working to make such cooperation faster and more effective. Over the past 60 years, The Republic of Korea has contributed approximately 8.8 million US dollars to UNODC through the Korea project, supporting criminal justice capacity building. We have also supported the CJUST, a network for practical criminal justice cooperation in Southeast Asia, and helped create opportunities for direct communication among central authorities and the practitioners. Our experience shows the formal frameworks work best when they are backed by trust and direct engagement. Mr. President, distinguished delegates, the Abu Dhabi Declaration will have real value when we turn its commitments into action. We hope this Congress will mark an important step towards turning our shared resolve into concrete and lasting progress. Mr. President, the Republic of Korea is pleased to join Pledge for Justice and give concrete effect to the shared commitments of the Abu Dhabi Declaration. With a view to advancing crime prevention and criminal justice, I pledge for the Republic of Korea to strengthen its domestic framework for tracing and recovering criminal proceeds, including by establishing a dedicated unit to be implemented by 2027. I further pledge for the Republic of Korea to implement the third phase of the Korea project with UNODC to strengthen criminal justice capacity and the asset recovery cooperation, and to support seizures, meetings and seminars to be implemented by 2029. Thank you.

I now have the honor of giving the floor to His Excellency Ambassador Farhan, of the Permanent Representative of Morocco to UN in Vienna.

President, Your Excellencies, Ministers, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen. I wish, on behalf of the Kingdom of Morocco, to express my appreciation and thanks to the United Arab Emirates for their warm welcome and their thorough preparation for the Congress. I commend the inclusive theme chosen for the Congress, justice that protects peoples and the planet and that consolidates trust. I wish to thank you for the trust you've placed in us upon our election as Vice Chair on behalf of the African Group. This is a trust we thank you for. However, we feel the weight of this responsibility, and we consider that it complements our commitment under the wise leadership of His Majesty King Mohammed VI vis-a-vis the African continent, as we believe that security, justice, and development constitute interlinked dimensions of one destiny. President, the Kingdom of Morocco espouses the spirit of the Abu Dhabi Declaration. In a world where we witness rapid transformations and where the nature of crimes is ever changing, we no longer ask ourselves the question, how can we fight crime, but rather what justice we want for the world of tomorrow. It is a justice that does not hinge on our capacity to punish, but rather our capacity to ensure prevention, to protect victims, to provide reparation, to ensure reintegration, and the rebuilding of trust. In line with this vision, the Kingdom of Morocco, under the wise leadership and guidance of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, has established a dynamic institutional and legislative ecosystem that placed individuals at the heart of our criminal justice policies. We have strengthened in this regard our protection of children, women and girls, victims of violence, and we ensured the implementation of alternative penalties since 2025, in addition to the new penal code, with strengthened guarantees for fair trial, the upholding of rights of victims, in addition to the implementation of reform projects that are coupled with the establishment of the national gene bank, as well as measures undertaken to manage seized property and assets. In our opinion, justice does not only hinge on our penalties, but rather on how we ensure reform and how we provide reparation and we ensure non-recidivism or reoffending. Your Excellencies, in the face of violent extremism, under the guidance of His Majesty the King, we've established an integrated and preventive approach that links security to prevention, reintegration, and rehabilitation. The program, or reconciliation, embodies this philosophy. Its 20th iteration was recently launched, with more than 436 beneficiaries since 2017. Sustainable security is not only ensured by addressing risks, however, but also by preventing their formation. Therefore, we must not only address the repercussions of extremism, but also address its root causes. In October 2025, we ratified the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime, and we continue to modernize our ecosystem, namely with regards to digital evidence and the digitalization of the penal code. The challenge of justice in this technological era is not merely or is about ensuring that innovation does not lose its humanity and that this does not lead to the undermining of fundamental freedoms. Crimes know no borders, and therefore we have ensured that our strategic that we consolidated the South-South cooperation at the strategic level. And we have signed more than 130 judicial cooperation agreements. Many are currently under negotiation. And we strengthened our legal ecosystem to pave the way to more international -- or for more international judicial cooperation. Organized crime, corruption, and terrorism are no longer stand-alone phenomena, but are rather intertwined. The source of their funding is interlinked, and these networks all benefit from the same technologies and financial tools. And if these threats are intertwined, our response must not be piecemeal. Therefore, From this very rostrum, we call upon you to consider the launching of a United Nations dynamic to ensure further coordination and integration amongst United Nations mechanisms and agencies mandated to address transnational organized crime and terrorism. This new dynamic can strengthen integration between the implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, as well as other anti-terrorism international conventions and instruments, while respecting each of their mandates. We must therefore build stronger bridges to ensure exchange of expertise, capacity building, the provision of technical assistance, judicial cooperation, and the prevention of emerging threats. We must move from the multiplicity of mechanisms to their integration, from circumstantial cooperation to more regular cooperation. from addressing these threats through piecemeal approaches to understanding their interlinkages. We believe that the Abu Dhabi Declaration constitutes an opportunity to kickstart this dynamic. Your Excellencies, the Kingdom of Morocco considers that the Abu Dhabi Declaration is not the end of our negotiations, but rather the beginning of a collective responsibility. The true value of international declarations is not about the principles that we draft, but our capacity to transform these commitments into action, and these actions into tangible results. This transformation requires strong justice that is built upon the law, which is humane which preempts through prevention, which leverages technologies, ensures solidarity across borders, and renders international cooperation a necessity, one that is based on human rights and trust. Under the wise leadership of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, the Kingdom of Morocco will continue to actively contribute to regional and international efforts to counter crime and to strengthen the rule of law. We stand ready to serve the international community by sharing our experience and by building partnerships to build a more just, secure, and effective international cooperation. If crimes cross borders, justice must do so as well through cooperation and solidarity. The Kingdom of Morocco will propose that it host future sessions of the Congress to ensure that we contribute or to ensure that we bring the United Nations closer to the African continent so that we can raise our African voice to address transnational developmental and security challenges. We believe that trust emanates from justice and that trust generates cooperation and that through cooperation, we can build our collective capacity to address crimes. We therefore pledge to continue to actively cooperate to international efforts to ensure crime prevention in all its forms. The Abu Dhabi Declaration will constitute our North Star in the future, namely through our contribution to the ratification of all relevant conventions while aligning our national laws therewith. We will continue to work on exchanging our experience to build more secure, more resilient and safer communities. I thank you for your kind attention.

Distinguished delegates, before we close today, I would now like to give the floor to the distinguished delegate of the United Arab Emirates, who has asked for the right to reply in accordance with rule 22 of the rules of procedure. Such reply should be brief as possible. Thank you. Sayyida Rais.

President, my country's delegation has asked for the floor to respond to the statement made by the representative of Sudan, who spoke on behalf of the Sudanese authorities, one of the party to the civil war in Sudan. We reject the accusations that were made against us, and we reiterate that we are not party to this war. We reject the exploitation of this Congress to once again distract attention from the responsibilities of the warring parties vis-a-vis the brotherly Sudanese people. And from this very rostrum, we call upon the Port Sudan authorities to make the necessary efforts to ensure a humanitarian truce, which the Quartet continues to call for. as reiterated on the 12th of September, instead of continuing to bypass their responsibilities. We call upon the President to ensure the holding of dialogue and prevent the exploitation of this Congress, which should not be turned into a platform for political exploitation by any warring party. I thank you, President.

Okay, before I finally close the meeting, I would like to give the floor to the Secretary of the Congress for some announcements.

Thank you very much, Madam President. And indeed, as I had already announced before, as we have now finally exhausted the list of speakers for today, we will suspend and we don't need the evening session so that everybody can join the gala dinner generously offered by our host country. So thank you very much, Madam President. If I may, we also remind all delegations that we start tomorrow with the plenary continuation of the high level debate at 9 a.m.. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Now to reiterate, we will reconvene the plenary of the Congress tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. to continue with the high-level segment. Thank you very much. The meeting is now adjourned.