Illicit Trafficking and Financial Flows

Countering gender-based violence, addressing vulnerability factors and empowering women have always been at the forefront of UNICRI work. Over the last 50 years the Institute has centered its crime prevention, justice and human rights protection programmes on gender issues and reducing the factors of vulnerability of women and girls.

Cross-border capital movements that serve to conceal illegal activities or evade taxation have been recently placed at the centre of the international agenda. Trade misinvoicing, profit shifting by multinational corporations, and offshore bank deposits to conceal the proceeds of crime or simply to avoid taxes, all deprive national treasuries of much needed resources. Resources which could otherwise be invested in development. Vulnerable populations in developing countries are the most affected by the harmful consequences of illicit financial flows.

In Mozambique persons with albinism are estimated at 20,000 to 30,000 individuals, a relatively small group, which is dispersed across the country. Even though albinism is a natural inherited condition, persons with albinism are subject to discrimination, exclusion, verbal and physical violent attacks, which can amount to body part and organ removal, organ trafficking and murder.

United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) Trafficking of Nigerian Girls in Italy. The Data, the Stories, the Social Services, UNICRI, Turin, 2010.