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4 Transnat'l Crim. L. Rev. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/tnslcllw4 and id is 1 raw text is: Transnational Criminal Law Review (2025) 4(1): 1-3 ©The Authors 2025 INTRODUCTION TO THIS SPECIAL ISSUE: HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNTOC Andreas Schloenhardt,* Bettina Weisser,t and Neil Boistert The year 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its Protocols against smuggling of migrants, trafficking in persons, and illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms and ammunition. This special issue of the Transnational Criminal Law Review critically reflects on the origins, content, implementation, and impact of these four instruments, and on the further development of transnational criminal law since their adoption. The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (or UNTOC) was praised shortly after it was concluded as 'one of the most important developments in international criminal law. The Convention and its Protocols were developed remarkably quickly and have found support from a great majority of States all over the world. States were unusually quick in signing and ratifying the Convention and its three Protocols. During the three days of the conference held in Palermo in December 2000 to present the Convention, 124 States (of the then 191 UN Member States) signed the Convention, the largest number of signatories any UN convention received immediately upon its opening for signature. The Convention and its Protocols were developed at a time when organized crime was spreading rapidly around the world, not least because of the end of the Cold War. The 1990s witnessed frequent attacks and assassinations by the Italian Mafia; the killings of the Magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino are just two of the most prominent examples. The increase of drug demand, production, and controls led to the formation of international drug cartels that accumulated enormous wealth, exerted significant political powers, and made the likes of Pablo Escobar the richest men on earth. During the same decade, the smuggling of migrants rose to new levels and thousands of people lost their lives on dangerous journeys to North America and Europe; the Golden Venture and Dover incidents are just two examples which many of us remember. At the same time, awareness was growing over trafficking in persons and the sexual and labour exploitation of women, men, and children. Lastly, the illicit arms trade and mass shootings led to calls for tighter controls of the firearms trade and gun possession. In the 1990s, the development of international legal frameworks was widely seen as one solution to these emerging problems. At the time, there was substantial momentum for building a global framework to prevent and suppress the activities of organized criminal groups, coupled with great enthusiasm for multilateralism and globalization, much more than there was at the time this special issue goes to print. The World Ministerial Conference held in Naples in 1994 is widely seen as the starting point of global efforts to draft an international instrument against organized crime. In 1998, the UN General Assembly set up an Ad Hoc Committee to develop the text of a new comprehensive international convention against organized crime, and three additional international legal instruments on (as they were referred to then) trafficking in women and children; illicit manufacturing and trafficking in firearms, their parts, and components; and illegal trafficking in and transporting of migrants, including by sea. In November 2000, the General Assembly * Professor of Criminal Law, University of Queensland, and Honorary Professor of Foreign and International Criminal Law, University of Vienna t Director of the Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, University of Cologne. $ Professor of Law, University of Canterbury 1 Gerhard Kemp, 'The United Nations Convention against Transnational organized Crime: a milestone in international criminal law' (2001) 14(2) South African Journal of Criminal Justice 166. 1

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