Author: Anesa Agovic
Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime has invited Global Analitika – Global Analytics to become a member of the Global Initiative’s Civil Society Observatory to counter organized crime in South Eastern Europe. The Observatory is a platform that connects and empowers civil-society actors in the Western Balkans Six. It aims to enable civil society to identify, analyze and map criminal trends, and their impact on illicit flows, governance, security and the rule of law.
Our engagement will contribute to sharing our expertise on Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to strengthen civil society’s response to the threat of organized crime in the region.
As organized crime infiltrates all levels of society, it is crucial that the response to organized crime also arises from within the community itself. Civil society actors, journalists and academia play a key role in this context.
We believe that our engagement in the regional network will help accomplish a stronger response to organized crime in South East Europe and build up community resilience. We will contribute to greater institutional accountability and provide the forum for debate about ways to strengthen governance and the rule of law in the region. Further, the network represents an opportunity to connect with other civil society actors who are involved in fighting organized crime in South Eastern Europe and to share experiences.
The Global Initiative commissions and shares research globally; curates a robust resource library of more than 2,000 reports and tools specific to organized crime; and uses its convening power to unite both the private and public sectors against organized crime. All reports and tools are available on the website for more detailed information.
One of the last published reports, “Crisis and opportunity: Impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on illicit drug markets” deals with the topic of organized crime at the time of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).
The implications of the coronavirus pandemic for governance and law enforcement will be profound and, from the perspective of illicit drug markets, the global disruption caused by COVID-19 can be seen as both a crisis and an opportunity. Key factors that have shaped drug markets in the past, and continue to shape them today, are the exploitation of opportunity amid crisis and rapid adaptation to environmental change. COVID-19 will generate longer-term implications for drug-market dynamics, law-enforcement tactics, and drug policy. This policy brief offers observations on the current and likely future drug market impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, with a discussion of policy-response measures as we draw closer to the inevitable post-pandemic recovery period of stock-taking and reflection.
