User:Maineditorial/sandbox/Global crime

Global crime refers to criminal activities that can be committed in one state by actors operating in another state. Although both global crime and transnational organized crime are trans-sovereign, global crime may refer to criminals operating alone as well as new forms criminal activities made possible by globalization and advances in technology.

Organized crime

Main article: Transnational organized crime

By taking advantage of the freedom to move capital (financial and human) and goods offered by globalization organized crime is one of the most dangerous security threats faced by states. From the Sicilian Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza, to the new competition of Russian and East European gangs and the "virtual mafias" of the cyber gang criminals, criminals are leveraging technology weak states to operate globally.

Modern connections have developed among criminal and terrorist associations. The prime example of this comes from international smuggling operations that move different substances; dependent on the arrangement of explicit administrations from illicit narcotics, weapons and human cargo, between countries. For example, the Islamic movement entered into a relationship with the Afghan drug gang and Asian cyber-criminal groups to be certain that transports of drugs could be safely transported between the Russian Federation and Afghanistan. There are also numerous accusations expressing that gangs linked to Al Qaeda made connections with the Bosnian criminal gangs to create a route for transporting Afghan heroin through the Balkans and into Europe. As well as that it is also believed that criminal networks in different parts of Thailand have smuggled arms into India and the Indonesian conflict areas of Aceh, Sulawesi and Maluku with the specific intent of arming terrorist groups.

Worries about North Korean drug sale and trafficking have also been questioned from the reports of the United Nations. The 1997 Report, for example, in the meticulous language normal to UN documents as such, notes that 'The Board has received disquieting reports on the drug control situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea’.Furthermore,  US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and numerous press reports express a reoccurring pattern of trafficking of counterfeit US money, and other smuggling activities by North Korean diplomats.

Maritime piracy

pirates observing a ship getting ready to attack it.

Maritime piracy is the plundering, hijacking, kidnapping, or detention of a ship in international waters - has evolved over the centuries but remains a challenge to international law. Those engage in these acts are known as Pirates. Piracy at sea has grown to such global porpotions that many countries around the world are eager to respond. The sea has always been challeneging and sea tariffs have quite enough to do as they go about their daily work aboard. Piracy has been around a long time. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC. Maritime piracy and armed robbery reaches 22-year low, says IMB report. A total of 180 incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships were reported to the International Chamber of Commerce's (ICC) International Maritime Bureau (IMB) in 2017, according to the latest IMB report. Piracy has been a round for a long time its just recently started appearing in the news in the early 2000s and in 2007/2008 we saw a spike in piracy off the coast of Somalia and a decrease in piracy incidents in an area that would have been considered busy off of South - East Asia. In 2017, 136 vessels were boarded, while there were 22 attempted attacks, 16 vessels fired upon and six vessels hijacked.

In 15 separate incidents, 91 crewmembers were taken hostage and 75 were kidnapped from their vessels in 13 other incidents. Three crew members were killed in 2017 and six injured. The coast of Somalia particularly I the gulf of Aden this is where the bulks of piracy attacks occur and recently this problem tends to be just growing. Somali pirates are now using hijacked merchant ships as mother ships to carry out attacks in the north Arabian Sea and near the coastline of India, more than 1500 nautical miles from Somalia.  Pirates operate multiple, high-speed skiffs to approach and fire on the bridges of vessels with automatic  weapons and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) in an attempt to slow or stop the vessels so the pirates can get on board.  Once a vessel has been hijacked, the pirates typically request a large ransom payment for the safe return of the crew, vessel and cargo.

Finding Solutions

Successfully addressing this threat is a complex challenge for both governments and businesses. The World Shipping Council (WSC) and its member companies are working closely with the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), other international maritime trade associations, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and various governments to closely monitor the ongoing piracy crisis in the Indian Ocean and to reduce the risk that commercial vessels transiting the affected region will be attacked and successfully hijacked. The WSC is  playing an active role in the development and revision of the industry Best Management Practices (BMPs)  for ships to prevent and respond to pirate attacks. Specifically, the BMPs call on vessels to communicate their intentions to transit the piracy high risk area to Naval Forces in the region and to employ vessel self protection measures based on a vessel-specific risk assessment.

The latest piracy that has happened took place on September 24, 2018, news broke of an attack on the motor vessel Glarus 45 nautical miles southwest of Bonny Island en route to Port Harcourt in Nigeria. Sailing from Lagos, the Massoel Shipping vessel, carrying wheat, was boarded by pirates and 12 of its 19 crew members taken hostage. The Gulf of Guinea alone accounted for more than 40 per cent of the world’s incidents of maritime piracy in the first quarter of 2018, underlining the very real threat that robbery or violence at sea still poses.

Maritime Piracy is a Global crime and needs to be dealt with immediately and effectively or it will have a negative impact on all the countries involved in it.

Money laundering and tax evasion

Poster issued by the British tax authorities to counter offshore tax evasion.

Tax evasion is the illegal evasion of taxes by individuals, corporations, and trusts. In contrast, tax avoidance is the legal use of tax laws to reduce one's tax burden. Tax evasion can be viewed as forms of tax noncompliance, as they describe a range of activities that intend to subvert a state's tax system, although such classification of tax avoidance is not indisputable, given that avoidance is lawful, within self-creating systems. Tax evasion is known to be one of the most common forms of global crime as it involves the intricate cooperation of various members in different countries and ways in which the allow money to pass through different borders.

Tax evasion is a way in which businesses and individuals avoid paying taxes through the use of tax havens and calculated financial transactions. The ways in which one may evade taxes is through becoming a tax resident in a country with low tax rates and just preform a calculated sequence of financial transactions. Tax evasion normally includes taxpayers purposely misrepresenting the true state of their affairs to the tax authorities to lower their tax liability and includes dishonest tax reporting, like declaring less profit, income or gains than the amounts actually earned, or overstating deductions.

Tax evasion is commonly associated with the informal economy. One measure of the extent of tax evasion is the "tax gap" which is the difference between the amount of income that should be reported to the tax authorities and the actual amount reported.

Money laundering usually includes a very intricate series of financial transactions usually between different foreign jurisdictions to make it more effective and harder to prosecute and investigate. Money laundering is a global obstacle to maintaining an effective operating international financial system and is also seen as a crime in the eyes of the government as it so many detrimental effects on society.

Global terrorism

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York of September 2001 that killed an estimated 3,000 people, President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror”..Terrorism has become a massive factor regarding global crime in recent times, with the total number of fatalities caused by terrorism from 2006 to 2017 thought to be 18,753 across the globe. Although there is no universally agreed definition of terrorism, it is commonly accepted as the use or threat of violence to advance a political or religious cause. Terrorism is not only a present-day problem, with its origins dating back to early religiously fueled political movements, such as the Sicarii. Since then, terrorism has evolved to become a major issue in global crime with constantly varying motives in different locations around the globe. Present day terrorism is most prominent in the middle east, with Iraq being the Number one country on the Global Terrorism Index; In 2017 alone, 1,951 acts of terror were committed in the country.

The effects of Terrorism on a global scale are profoundly felt by countries both experiencing the bulk of attacks and the countries which are leading the fight against it. As it can be observed from statistics, three of the top five countries in which the most terrorist acts were carried out can be found in the Middle Eastern Region; Iraq tops the list while Afghanistan and Pakistan follow. The remaining seven of the top ten on the list can be found in either Africa or Asia. However, although considerably less terrorist attacks take place in Western Countries, its consequences have still been felt in the form of Military Intervention. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York, orchestrated by Al Qaeda, the United States Military waged a fiery battle on the group and their sanctuaries. It can be observed that this takes a massive toll on Nations’ budgets, with huge amounts of money being used to fight the issue at the expense of other topical problems such as developmental projects. Whilst it can be noted that this intervention is of benefit to the countries that are most affected by Terrorism directly, it is obviously employed with the supreme objective of improving homeland security due to a significant rise in Terrorist recruitment in Western Countries.

The future of Global Terrorism and its effect on people is, at best, uncertain. A study suggests that the fear which terrorism instils in people illustrates how the role of perceived knowledge through the mainstream media may exacerbate or mitigate fear. The implications for policy are then felt by this concept.

Human and drug trafficking

Trafficking is the process of dealing or trading something illegal. Trafficking is a global crime as exploitation through the black market is seen all over the world, in developing and developed countries. Trafficking takes many forms, the most commonly known are human trafficking and drug trafficking.

Trafficking in persons is a serious crime and a grave violation of human rights. Every year, thousands of men, women and children fall into the hands of traffickers, in their own countries and abroad. Almost every country in the world is affected by trafficking, whether as a country of origin, transit or destination for victims. UNODC, as guardian of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) and the Protocols thereto, assists States in their efforts to implement the  Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (Trafficking in Persons Protocol) There are many different kinds of Human Trafficking alone. Article 3, paragraph (a) of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons defines Trafficking in Persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. Sex trafficking is one of the most common form of human trafficking. It is a well known major growing issue seen around the world today. Over the years, human trafficking has, unfortunately, become a global multi-billion-dollar enterprise that affects nearly every single country, according to the United Nations. And sex trafficking alone is among the world's fastest growing criminal industries.According to an Equality Now fact sheet, the sex trafficking industry pulls in an estimated $99 billion each year.

Drug Trafficking is a global illicit trade involving the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. UNODC is continuously monitoring and researching global illicit drug markets in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their dynamics. Drug trafficking is a key part of this research. Further information can be found in the yearly World Drug Report. Drug Trafficking is a major global issue as it is thriving everywhere in the world today. Drug taking has become a social norm in society today, which is why the market for drugs is growing and developing at an alarming rate around the globe. How drugs are used and are trafficked is constantly changing and the ways they are trafficked are growing in technical and organisational complexity. What is not changing is the profitability of the drugs trade. Every year EU citizens spend tens of billions of euros on illicit drugs.The organised crime groups (OCGs) involved are becoming more specialised and more fully interconnected. And the overall rate of change is accelerating, partly as a result of globalisation. Drug trafficking negatively effects everything surrounding it. It ravishes communities, endangers businesses, strains government institutions, and drags down the wider economy. It is a growing market as the demand for drugs is rising. Drug trafficking is big business, bringing in a fifth of all profits from organised crime. Trafficking is a growing global crime that is negatively impacting the world.

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