United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

UNODC, short for United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, is the world's leading international organization that focuses on addressing illicit drug trafficking, counter terrorism, and organized crime. Founded in Austria, Vienna in 1997, the UNODC spreads field offices across 105 countries around the globe with the mission to prevent crime and strengthen cooperation with member states to reinforce justice systems. 

Their core mission is to promote global peace and security, actively working with member states to combat improper and illicit drug use, crime, and corruption. While actively combatting those issues, the UNODC places significance on promoting human rights, gender equality, and empowerment of minorities.  Representatives from 105 member states continue to work together to maintain drug control and prevent further crime. 

Human Trafficking for Forced Crimes is a phenomenon where traffickers coerce, manipulate, exploit, or threaten individuals into playing a role in illegal practices. These practices, more often than not, include a form of cybercrime, financial fraud, scamming, theft, or even drug trafficking.

In 2023 alone, the UNODC claimed at least $18 billion USD of monetary losses as a result from cybercrimes, highlighting the criticality of human trafficking for forced crimes.  Human trafficking turning into hubs for cybercrimes are more prevalent in Southeast Asia but these hubs have started to spread to regions globally. The UNODC has reported around 80 nationalities affected by human trafficking turned into call centres ranging from different parts of Asia, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and parts of Europe. Trafficking in Persons (TIP) is not just limited to illegal businesses, but also includes practices from legal establishments where victims are involuntary complicit to illegal activities. 

The UNODC recognizes that human trafficking remains most heavily prevalent in nations that struggle from poverty, lack quality education, or suffer greatly from gender or economic inequalities. Legal frameworks around this situation become increasingly difficult for governments and nations to navigate as they are victims, but as well legally liable actors. Allocation of responsibility, repercussions, and accountability become a difficult balance. Nations must come together to create a solution that not only addresses victims’ lack of agency, but also solutions to find culpability and end these crimes in the long-term

1. How are nations and international organizations able to identify organizers of transnational crimes? 

2. To what extent should a human trafficking victim be held responsible for their participation in a crime? How can they balance the perspective of seeing them as a victim and as an individual who committed a crime?

3. What role do international organizations play when holding accountability to nations whose organized crime hubs affected individuals in other countries? 

4. How are governments able to differentiate individuals being coerced into crime versus ones who voluntarily participate in such activity? 

1. Five reasons why the UN Global Plan of Action to combat trafficking in persons matters

2. Explainer: What is trafficking for forced criminality? 

3. Forced to scam: Inside one of the fastest-growing forms of human trafficking 

4. Forced Criminality: Involuntary Crimes 

The UNODC defines New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) as substances that mimic the effect of illegal drugs with the preparation or pure form of the substance bypassing existing drug laws. With these NPS, legal gaps exist with the preparation or forms of these substances not falling under the current international drug control systems, such as The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 or The Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971. 

This has become an emerging issue as the spread of these NPS continues to rapidly grow, with governments and international organizations failing to keep up with identification, testing, and regulation of said NPS’. Not only has the rapid development of these substances become a pressing matter, but also the distribution of these substances beyond international borders and the ability to track and identify effectively past a country's borders. 

With the continuous emergence of NPS’ in the market, the continuous added threats to overall public health and safety. Failure of testing these substances pose a severe risk to public health as both immediate and long term effects on the human body remain unknown. 

As of late 2025, the UNODC announced the emergence of over 1300 new psychoactive substances in 153 countries globally. The surfacing of these NPS is most commonly reported in parts of North America and Europe, however, other regions may fail to report accurate statistics proving that numbers could be higher than reported. Nations and international organizations must come together to develop an effective solution to monitor, identify, test, and regulate these new psychoactive substances. 

1. How can governments and international organizations work together to create timely responses to the rapid emergencies of these NPS? 

2. How should the distribution of these NPS be addressed? How are nations going to combat the ease of distribution of these NPS because of online platforms and networks? 

3. Should education and prevention be prioritized when it comes to combatting NPS as a growing issue? 

4. Can nations create an effective approach to accurately track and monitor the creation of NPS beyond their sovereign borders? 

5. What information, if there are any, should be mandatory for governments to share regarding scientific testing and identification? 

• Assessment of  the abuse and dependence potential  of new psychoactive substances: SYNTHETIC OPIOIDS 

• What are NPS? 

• New Psychoactive Substances: A Potential Threat to Developing Countries - PMC