Throughout this process, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (henceforth ‘GI-TOC’) has submitted several statements and guidance notes outlining its positions on the key points of the treaty.1 In the spirit of continued engagement, and with a view to contributing ahead of the next draft of the treaty, which is due to be presented in November, the GI-TOC outlines here some k. [...] A strong push for consensus on an ambiguous and broad treaty could result in the adoption of a UN convention that legitimizes or encourages the targeting and sharing of evidence against individuals, thus providing a legal basis for the UN to run counter to its own human rights obligations and priorities, and setting states on a difficult path to ratification in their own systems. [...] § The capacity-building and technical assistance programmes implemented under the auspices of the treaty could require a UN agency (in this case, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime – UNODC) to implement state training programmes that could undermine the UN’s human rights obligations, and empower and train states in practices that go against international human rights law. [...] The key difference is that they would be able to do so with the blessing of a UN convention, and even with the technical assistance of the UN. [...] The GI-TOC agrees with the position of the UN Human Rights Office that grounds for refusal should expressly include ‘the risk that assistance will represent a real and foreseeable risk of irreparable harm, and the risk that the request concerns an offence considered a political offence, or an offence connected with a political offence’.5 A comparative source that could be drawn from is the UNODC's.
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