CIVICUS discusses the United Nations (UN) Convention against Cybercrime with Pavlina Pavlova, Cybercrime Working Group Lead at the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. The Alliance seeks to ensure effective civil society participation in multilateral discussions on crime and justice issues.
The Convention, adopted in December 2024, will open for signature at a ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam on 25 October. It seeks to strengthen international cooperation against cybercrime, but its origins, in a 2019 Russian resolution that faced significant opposition from democratic states, are contentious. Civil society has raised serious concerns about its broad scope and lack of adequate human rights protections, and is now advocating for inclusive oversight mechanisms that can prevent misuse of its far-reaching powers.