UN Office on Drugs & Crime

During the Chief Executives Board Meeting, I had the distinguished honour of delivering a farewell toast to the @UN Secretary-General @antonioguterres on behalf of the UN family away from Headquarters: Vienna, Nairobi, Geneva and every other office where the UN flag flies outside of New York. Madam Deputy Secretary-General, @AminaJMohammed, thank you for being a shinning light and inspiration for women and girls especially in the African continent. Mr. Secretary-General,   Tonight, we - your UN family far from Headquarters - want you to hear us.   We are the offices you always remembered.   When the world looked to New York, you looked to us. You visited our duty stations not for ceremony, but to listen. You sat with our staff in Vienna fighting drug traffickers, in Nairobi protecting the environment, in Geneva defending human rights, in the field where there are no cameras.   You taught us that the UN is not a building in Manhattan. The UN is a promise that must be kept in the farthest village.   For ten years, you kept that promise with moral clarity. In a time of war, you spoke for peace. In a time of division, you spoke for unity. In a time of climate despair, you spoke for the planet when no one else would. You were the conscience of the world, even when the world did not want a conscience.   You told us: “We are not here to make reports. We are here to make a difference in people’s lives.”   We will carry that with us.   From the United Nations family at the Vienna International Centre, we say thank you. Thank you for trusting us. Thank you for believing that security and justice must reach everyone.   You leave as a moral leader of our generation.   This is not goodbye. As you said yourself - “Once UN, always UN.”   The blue flag will fly a little lower tomorrow, because you are leaving it. But it will fly with more pride, because you held it high.   Obrigado, António.

Our new @UNODC opium survey on Afghanistan shows a concerning resurgence in opium cultivation and production. This shows the difficulty of sustaining progress against illicit cultivation if farmers have no viable way to feed their families. The answer is to give farmers real alternatives through licit livelihoods, better farming infrastructure and access to markets. At the same time, we must pursue a balanced approach that reduces drug demand in consumer markets, while strengthening border management and law enforcement action against drug traffickers. The international community and the de facto authorities must work together under existing engagement frameworks to make this happen. UNODC is on the ground, supporting development-oriented approaches that give farming communities a path beyond opium. Full report: unodc.org/documents/crop-mon…

Reform and resourcing are two sides of the same responsibility. In times of financial constraint, we must direct available resources to where they are needed most. But we must also ensure that the mandates entrusted to us are matched by the means to deliver on them, especially as the demand for our work grows. This was my central message in my briefing to the UN Fifth Committee on Administrative and Budgetary matters. I outlined how, through UN80, we are working to make better use of our expertise and resources, while strengthening Vienna as a modern, integrated UN hub. For @UNODC, this means becoming more agile, breaking down silos and connecting our work more effectively to meet the converging threats of transnational organized crime and deliver greater impact on the ground. My thanks to Mr. Muktar Shehu, who moderated the briefing with the Fifth Committee on behalf of the Chair.