AFRICA FACED WITH STAGGERING RISE IN CRIME
Press Release
SOC/CP/209
AFRICA FACED WITH STAGGERING RISE IN CRIME
19981203 Background Release(Reissued as received.)
VIENNA, 3 December (UN Information Service) -- How crime can be better controlled and prevented both nationally and transnationally will be the main topic at a meeting of experts and top government officials from 52 African nations in Kampala, Uganda, from 7 to 9 December.
Delegates at the meeting, organized by the Vienna-based United Nations Centre for International Crime Prevention in cooperation with the African Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders and hosted by the Ugandan Government, will focus on promoting the rule of law, combating international crime, keeping pace with crime prevention strategies and ensuring that justice is fair for all.
In the wake of major political and economic changes, African nations are currently facing an upsurge in crime. Higher crime levels have become a major hindrance to development, particularly in southern Africa. Burglaries and violent crimes like murder, rape and child abuse have risen considerably, while economic crime, including corruption, have become almost endemic in some nations.
Crime is generally higher in Africa's densely populated and growing urban areas, brought on by unemployment, overcrowded housing and the sheer need to survive. A high percentage of younger people among the increasing flows of migrants from the countryside end up unemployed, join criminal gangs, become street children or use illegal drugs.
The meeting is the third in a series of four regional meetings to collect inputs for the Tenth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders, to be held in Vienna in April 2000. Delegates will include leading government crime officials as well as representatives of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and the relevant United Nations agencies.
Meeting participants will also prepare for four practical workshops to be conducted at the Tenth Congress, on combating corruption, crime related to computer networks, community involvement in crime prevention and women in the criminal justice system. The workshops should serve as a springboard for expanding the technical assistance capabilities of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme.
The first regional crime meeting was held in Bangkok in November for the Asian and Pacific region and the second in Beirut for the western Asia region. A fourth meeting will be held before the end of February in San Jose for the Latin American region.
To date, the United Nations has held nine Crime Congresses, which have served to boost international cooperation in crime control and have recommended vital guidelines and standards on crime prevention and criminal justice.
Rule of Law
Criminal justice systems in many African nations are not only weak but often based on old colonial laws at odds with a country's culture and current social problems. Police forces may be rooted in outdated colonial methods designed mainly to exploit or coerce, rather than protect people or prevent crime.
Police forces are also beset with funding problems, a drastic shortage of well-trained personnel, a lack of modern equipment and corruption. Delegates in Kampala will discuss special approaches that could help promote the rule of law and also how the United Nations could best provide technical aid needed to rebuild legal systems in countries that have suffered from conflicts.
In a recent visit to eastern and central Africa, Secretary-General Kofi Annan stressed the role of national and multilateral juridical systems in bringing about peace after conflicts. In Rwanda, where between 500,000 and a million people were killed in the 1994 ethnic genocide, he highlighted the importance of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, based in Arusha, United Republic of Tanzania, in prosecuting those guilty of atrocities and building trust between the two parties.
Transnational Crime
As the world becomes increasingly global, new forms of transnational crime are appearing to pose fresh challenges to criminal justice systems. Crime syndicates in Africa have previously concentrated on black market business crimes, including west African diamond and cattle smuggling, southern African coffee smuggling and poaching. But many syndicates have now branched out into economic crimes, such as loan and credit card fraud, check forgery
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and insurance fraud as well as trafficking in autos, guns, human beings and more recently, illicit drugs.
Since psychoactive substances have not traditionally been widely used in Africa, the continent has lacked a strong, high-profit drug market. A study of university students in a Northern African city in the mid-1980s found broad use of psychoactive substances such as coffee, cola nuts, cannabis, alcohol and cigarettes. But heroin use seemed non-existent and most students had only a passing knowledge of cocaine, which they frequently confused with codeine.
However, drug trafficking by criminal groups in Africa has markedly increased over the past few years, boosted by political instability, inflation, high unemployment, economic inequality and rampant corruption. Western African nations have become major entry points for heroin from South-East Asia, especially now that traffickers are sending less of the drug to the United States and more to Europe and Japan.
Cocaine syndicates are operating in several West African countries, capitalizing on weak government efforts to monitor imported goods, secure international borders and check internal capital flow. Western African countries are doing an increasing amount of trafficking in Mandrax, dagga and LSD, moving these drugs along traditional smuggling routes. Mandrax is commonly traded in this region for vehicle spare parts and stolen automobiles from the south of the continent.
Syndicates may launder illicit funds by purchasing "junk commodities" that are resold at vastly inflated prices, through wire transfers to safe banking havens or simply by smuggling cash in cars, refrigerators and other items that are later resold.
In tackling the growing transnational crime problem in Africa, delegates in Kampala will focus on problems such as extradition and mutual legal assistance, economic and financial crimes, including money laundering and corruption, trafficking in human beings, terrorism and giving technical aid to countries in need.
Corruption
Corruption is a major problem throughout the African continent. Countries undergoing rapid political, economic and cultural change often suffer drastic changes in living standards, high unemployment and large income differences. Overworked and underpaid criminal justice workers are often tempted to abuse their wide-ranging powers. Many regions lack laws to combat corruption or even guidelines to identify it.
The most common form of corruption is bribery, which often occurs when contracts are given out. Or officials may seek other means of personal gain, such as kick-backs from development programmes and pay-offs for legislative
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support, diverting public resources for private use, overlooking illegal acts or interfering in the justice process.
Violence Against Women and Problems with Youth
Women play a subservient role in many African regions. An entire set of values, traditions and customs that stress the power of men leave women open to violence, such as wife battering, rape, genital mutilation, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, psychological violence and confinement. Some traditional practices officially sanction violence against women and children as a form of "moderate chastisement".
Wife battering is not seen as a major offence under some customary laws. A husband has the right to discipline his wife with violence, so that many women expect to be battered and men to beat their partners. In southern Africa, no laws or procedures to deal with complaints from battered women exist. The state is generally reluctant to enter what is considered a private family matter.
Another major problem facing many African nations is the increasing number of children living in low income urban areas, who are continually denied their rights. These "street children" are the remnants of war or social and political events, are working on the streets for survival, or have escaped from broken homes and congested households.
Attitudes towards these children range from empathy to resentment and hostility, which are based on presumed anti-social acts, such as begging, scavenging, pick-pocketing, drug abuse, prostitution and gangsterism.
In Africa at large, and southern Africa in particular, women and children continue to be physically and emotionally victimized. While human rights questions exist on the agendas of many governments, many criminal justice systems throughout the region have failed to protect women and children.
Arms Trafficking
As conflicts have continued to plague Africa over the past few decades -- 14 of the continent's 53 nations suffered from armed hostilities in 1996 alone and over 30 wars have broken out since 1970 -- arms trafficking has become a well-rooted and highly profitable business.
In a recent report focusing on the causes of conflict in Africa, Secretary-General Kofi Annan sharply criticized international arms merchants for being among those who "profit from conflict in Africa". He urged nations to bring in laws making the violation of Security Council arms embargoes by individuals or corporations a crime. Although publicly identifying these
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merchants has been difficult, Mr. Annan stressed that this legislation would do more to combat the flow of illicit arms to Africa than any other measure.
Mr. Annan called on African States to cut their arms and munitions purchases to less than 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and keep growth of defence budgets at zero for the next 10 years. He also urged them to take greater part in the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, which currently includes only seven African countries.
Crime Prevention
A major priority of many nations is to keep pace with new ways to prevent crime, including traditional measures such as the family's role and formal education as well as innovative technology. The Kampala meeting will examine regional prevention in light of the changing patterns of crime, especially at a time when information technology is rapidly changing.
Treatment of Offenders
Problems in African justice systems range from delay of cases to poor prison conditions and failure to respect the minimum rights of suspects and offenders. Most nations lack clear penal policies or are rife with contradictions. Prisoners live in inhumane conditions, where overcrowding, a high death rate among inmates and neglect of the special needs of imprisoned women and children are common.
Respect for human rights varies within justice systems and between countries. Most national constitutions actually list the rights of suspects and offenders, but these are denied by authoritarian governments, corruption, abuse by investigating officers, delays in cases or shortage of manpower and other resources. Some lawyers have been accused of denying offenders their basic rights through inefficiency or exorbitant fees.
Issues of key concern in Kampala will be investigation, prosecution and penalties. The meeting hopes to spark the exchange of information and experiences as well as foster international cooperation and technical assistance in these vital fields.
The meeting will take place against efforts by some African nations to improve the lot of offenders in the region. The 1996 Kampala Declaration on Prison Conditions in Africa and the 1998 Kadoma Declaration on Community Service have helped to reduce prison overcrowding and increase non-custodial penalties -- especially important for offenders who are the only family breadwinners.
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