Quakers, crime and the United Nations

Marian Liebmann gives her thoughts on a productive gathering

Did you know that Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) has the highest level consultative status at the United Nations sessions through the FWCC World Office? This means we have the right to send a delegation to UN sessions. Every year since 1992 FWCC has sent a small delegation to the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), which meets every year for one week in Vienna.

Every five years there is a larger Congress in a different city. In 2020 it will be in Kyoto, Japan. Nick McGeorge and Kimmett Edgar have been the leaders of this work, and I have been part of the team for ten years. The team usually includes mostly Quakers from the UK (for cost reasons), but occasionally we have a North American delegate.

The Commission is the main policy-making body of the United Nations in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice. The UN plays an important role globally as a forum in which governments can cooperate on matters of cross-border interest. The CCPCJ also publishes a range of international guidance on best practice, helping to promote humane standards in criminal justice.

Cybercrime

This year the Crime Commission met between 14-18 May. There is usually a set theme for the year. Last year it was ‘community participation’ and this year it was ‘cybercrime’. As Quakers we tend to focus on promoting humanitarian practices in criminal justice, so ‘cybercrime’ did not have an instant appeal, but it turned out to offer us a useful opportunity. The delegation comprised Kimmett Edgar, Ben Jarman and me.

The main sessions include statements from different countries and the passing of resolutions, this year numbering eleven. Resolutions are sponsored by named countries and then amended by a process of negotiation in the Committee of the Whole (commonly known as the COW). Sometimes opposing views need to be thrashed out informally outside the main meetings of the COW. Often this process means a watering down of a resolution so that dissident countries have less to comply with! For instance, ‘implement’ might be altered to ‘give consideration to’.

This year’s session was a productive one for FWCC. There was a restorative justice resolution, which finally got adopted in a reduced form. It included such statements as:

Encourages member states, where appropriate, to consider facilitating restorative justice processes at relevant stages in the criminal justice process, to the extent possible and in accordance with applicable law, including by considering applying the basic principles on the use of restorative justice programs in criminal matters.

Further invites member states to assist one another in the exchange of experiences on restorative justice and in the development and implementation of research, training or other programmes and activities to stimulate discussion, including through relevant regional initiatives.

One might think that governments take no notice of resolutions if they don’t like them, but they do seem to count. In 2002 the UN passed a resolution encouraging restorative justice, and the following year many more countries reported initiatives in restorative justice. Some of these seemed a bit bizarre, but they had definitely heard the message that restorative justice was important to implement.

Restorative justice

We were also able to make a statement to the plenary session in support of restorative justice and the resolution. To do this, we needed to draft our statement and send it to the FWCC World Office and the Quaker United Nations Offices (QUNO) in New York and Geneva to get it approved, so that we could speak on behalf of FWCC.

This is where email is really essential! Then we had to ask the administration team where it could fit in the Plenary Session agenda, and be ready to be called. Afterwards one of the country representatives sponsoring the restorative justice resolution commented on it favourably. Here is our concluding paragraph:

Restorative justice is an inclusive response, which gives voice to the concerns of victims, people who have offended, and the wider community. It is adaptable and varied – every culture has within it wisdom about how to remedy harms that fits with restorative approaches. We commend the expert group report [which was the basis of the restorative justice resolution] and support the draft resolution submitted to this session of the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.

There were also side events, mainly organised by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which we attended to inform ourselves about matters of interest to Quakers.

We contributed a side event on ‘A restorative approach to social media in schools’ (to fit in with the cybercrime theme), facilitated by Charlotte Calkin of the Restorative Engagement Forum. This used a workshop approach, much appreciated by participants as a more interactive alternative to other events.

We also attended side events organised by other governments and NGOs, on varied topics, such as global prison trends, efforts to abolish the death penalty, life imprisonment, mental health in prisons, non-custodial measures for drug offenders, and the dangers of cyberspace for young people.

Building relationships

We also spent time building relationships with other NGO delegations, including Penal Reform International (PRI), who are trying to build a coalition to place new international standards for life sentences on the agenda of next year’s CCPCJ. These would replace the current guidelines, substantially written by Nick McGeorge, which were adopted by the UN in 1994. PRI presented research at one of their side events that supported the case for new guidance, given the growing prevalence of life sentences worldwide.

It is a strange kind of work, and we sometimes wonder what effect we have. But a statement we made in 2003 on the ‘Plight of Women Prisoners’, to counteract the male bias, resulted in a spate of interest and research on women in prison and their children.

Kimmett Edgar’s work on the Nelson Mandela Rules (the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners) has helped to provide a leading document setting out humane conditions in prison.

It is sometimes frustrating to see good resolutions watered down, or nations squabbling over the precise wording of one line, and it can seem to outsiders that progress is painfully slow and sometimes goes backwards. However, the small steps forward are magnified by their international acceptance and, sometimes, their implementation.

It is a privilege to represent Quakers in this work.

---

Comments

Please login to add a comment