On 15 October 2015, Mr. Ruslan Stefanov, SELDI Coordinator took part in the workshop Development Responses to Organised Crime: New Agendas, New Opportunities, hosted by the UK’s Department for International Development and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime in London. He highlighted the civil society role in building resilience to both corruption and organised crime, and shared SELDI’s corruption monitoring methodology.
The meeting was timed to support the alignment of policy and practice around a number of ongoing high‐level policy debates, including the Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 (ASD2030) and its implementation, the consequences of the Financing for Development review, and the 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS).
This meeting brought together about 50 policymakers, experts and development practitioners. Representatives from twelve UK government departments participated in the event, underlining how wide the debate has become, as well as the ever-increasing need to build bridges between different departments, build a common language and create new government approaches. The participants stressed that the ASD2030 outcome shows that there is no longer a question that development actors have a role to play in countering organized crime – this was less clear when the Development Dialogue process began – but the challenge remains complex, without simple solutions. Debating the complexity, discarding simple solutions, innovating new response and seeking ways to measure progress are the key issues on the agenda today, and there is a hope that the Development Dialogue can continue to add value to that process.
Presentation by Mr. Ruslan Stefanov, SELDI Coordinator (Adobe PDF, 1.2 MB)
