United Nations agrees to international treaty on cybercrime

Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Cybercrime Bill and Minister of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology, Edmund Hinkson, is flanked by Database Administrator of the Ministry of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology, Joseph Koroma, and the Permanent Representative of Barbados to the United Nations in New York, HE François Jackman. (GP)

The United Nations Committee responsible for overseeing negotiations on an international convention on cybercrime has on 8^and August 2024 into a text that will be formally adopted by the UN General Assembly later this year.

This treaty will be the first global, legally binding instrument against cybercrime, which will combat the use of information and communication technologies for criminal purposes. It is the culmination of five years of effort by UN member states, with input from civil society, academia and the private sector.

The draft treaty notes that new technologies have created opportunities for greater scale, speed and scope of crimes, from terrorism to drug trafficking, transnational organized crime, trafficking in persons, smuggling of people, trafficking in firearms and in cultural heritage. The document offers tools that will enhance international cooperation, law enforcement efforts, information sharing, technical assistance and capacity building in relation to cybercrime, as well as the transfer of technology on mutually agreed terms, all of which will benefit developing countries such as Barbados.

The draft treaty concerns the criminalisation of illegal access to information and communications technology systems, illegal interception and disruption of electronic data, illegal use of devices, online child sexual abuse, exploitation and grooming, online distribution of intimate images without mutual consent and money laundering of proceeds of crime.

CARICOM has negotiated as a group at these meetings for the past three years. The Barbados delegation at this latest two-week meeting consisted of Hon. Edmund Hinkson, SC, Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Joint Select Parliamentary Committee on the Cybercrime Bill, and Joseph Koroma, Data Administrator of the Ministry of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology. They were supported by the Barbados Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York.

To read the draft treaty, click on here.