The following is the full text of her remarks.
Your Excellency, Mr. Luong Cuong,
President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,
Mr. Secretary-General,
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is my honor to join you to crown five years of negotiations with this landmark achievement: the signature of the U.N. Convention against Cybercrime.
The road has been long and challenging. Over 420 hours of formal negotiations and countless hours of informal negotiations involving more than 150 Member States and enriched by 160 stakeholders from international organizations, NGOs, academia, and the private sector.
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Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Ghada Waly speaks at the High-Level Conference on the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime in Hanoi on October 25. |
The result is a resounding statement that multilateralism still works, and that the international community is serious about cybercrime.
I want to join the Secretary-General in thanking Vietnam for bringing us together for a common global cause, and for hosting us in beautiful Hanoi.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime is proud to support Vietnam in organizing this conference, and we will continue to count on Vietnam’s leadership and partnership as we bring the new Convention into action.
Excellencies,
A new age of cybercrime is here.
Advances in software and artificial intelligence are re-defining the scope, scale, and sophistication of the threats we face.
In the past, ransomware attacks used to hold hard drives hostage. Today, they bring entire supply chains to a halt, and the perpetrators demand billions of dollars.
Phishing attempts used to rely on crude imitations of official emails and log-in pages. Today, they involve expertly crafted automated deceptions.
Online scams used to prey on those who were less familiar with the signs. Today, AI can fool any of us into thinking that we are talking to a police officer, a bank employee, or even a loved one.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies have created new possibilities for large-scale, anonymous transactions.
And the rise of cybercrime as a service means that any criminal can have access to advanced tools for a fee.
These developments are changing the face of organized crime as we know it.
Different forms of trafficking have grown more expansive as goods, money, and expertise flow more freely in the dark spaces of our digital world.
Online sexual exploitation and abuse have exploded, aided by new tools to generate, disseminate, and profit from this horror.
The WeProtect Alliance found that reports of child sexual exploitation and abuse material increased by 87% between 2019 and 2023.
Criminals are also becoming less and less constrained by borders.
A scam center in Southeast Asia can target a victim of online fraud in Europe, using trafficked labor from different regions.
A child in Africa can be abused online by criminals from across all continents, while the material is stored on a server in North America.
A hacker group in Europe can infiltrate a bank in Latin America and siphon away millions in milliseconds, routed via crypto.
The impact of cybercrime on people is catastrophic, depriving them of their savings, livelihoods, safety, dignity, or even their lives.
And the financial costs are humongous. A 2024 report by IBM found that the average cost of a single data breach is almost five million dollars.
We are seeing cybercriminals bring multinationals to their knees, decimate smaller organizations, and use developing countries as testing grounds for their techniques.
Excellencies,
A new age of cybercrime is here. And the world is not ready to face it.
Responses are fragmented across jurisdictions and riddled with gaps of technology and capacity.
That is why the new U.N. Cybercrime Convention represents a paradigm shift, and it is a paradigm shift that we need.
The new Convention fills urgent gaps in the global response to cybercrime and provides a practical launchpad for collective action.
But what does the Convention bring to the table, in practice?
It brings unified legal standards to eliminate safe havens for cybercriminals, while safeguarding human rights.
It brings a universal framework for collecting, preserving, exchanging, and using electronic evidence across different jurisdictions.
It brings a joint platform to share intelligence, pursue judicial cooperation, and build capacities, a platform that is open to every country and compatible with regional arrangements.
It brings future-facing, technology-neutral language that focuses on criminal acts rather than specific tech, making it adaptable to the threats of tomorrow.
And it brings grounds to criminalize offenses that target the vulnerable and especially women, children, and the elderly, including dissemination of non-consensual intimate images, child sexual exploitation and abuse online, and all types of online fraud.
It is imperative now more than ever to protect people, as cyber predators grow more active.
Excellencies,
The U.N. Convention against Cybercrime is a historic opportunity.
To seize this opportunity, we need to achieve two objectives.
Firstly, we need to ensure that the Convention enters into force as early as possible, as the Secretary-General called for, by promoting signature and ratification by all Member States.
And secondly, we need to pave the way for its full and effective implementation, including legislation, partnerships, and technical capabilities.
This requires a bold and size-able investment of political and financial resources, particularly to build capacities in developing countries.
And it requires collaboration with the private sector and civil society to unlock the Convention’s full potential.
As the Secretary-General emphasized, no one is safe until everyone is safe when it comes to cybercrime.
UNODC is already hard at work to support both of those objectives.
We have developed a ratification methodology that accounts for different legal systems and capabilities, and we are ready to work with partners to make ratification as simple as possible for Member States.
And beyond ratification, our Office will provide tailored technical assistance on implementation.
UNODC already has more than a decade of experience supporting over 60 countries to prevent, disrupt, investigate, and prosecute cyber-related crimes; to bring cybercrime laws and regulations in line with international standards; to facilitate cooperation between countries and with the private sector on cybercrime; and to sensitize institutions and societies to cyber threats.
Our mandates, expertise, and relationships on the ground give us a strong head-start as we prepare to work with you on implementing the new Convention.
UNODC will also be supporting your important discussions in the next two years to elaborate rules of procedure for the Convention and to discuss additional protocols.
The road ahead of us is clear. We must now walk it together, with conviction.
Ladies and gentlemen,
At this conference, you can put pen to paper and sign on to a safer future for all, online and off, a future where cybercriminals can no longer find refuge in digital or legal blind spots.
I hope that you will join, support, and invest in the new U.N. Convention against Cybercrime, to make that future a reality, to make the world a better, safer, and more prosperous place.
Thank you.
Source: VNA