PANEL “REGIONAL SECURITY PERSPECTIVES”- Mr Mauricio Vieira

For all of the teamwork we've been seeing over these past few months in organizing this forum, to you and to your team, thank you very much. I would like to highlight two key ideas from your words, which are just about closing words. You have mentioned some interesting highlights from what we've talked about, but what you said about the 18 model laws that Parlotino has available on his website for all of the countries present here and all of those who are following us on the stream, this is a very concrete contribution to the Parliamentary Intelligence Security Forum. 18 model laws that are developed that can be used to introduce legislative reforms, not just in Latin America, but in many other countries, in many other regions, and many other similar parliaments, those similar to the Parlotino around the world. I'm glad that you mentioned that about the 23 lights. I had counted them and I was trying to figure out exactly why there were 23, so I appreciate you mentioning that. I would like to invite Mauricio Vieda next. He is our Chair on Countering Illicit Trade and Preventing Transnational Organized Crime from the University for Peace from the United Nations. What's very interesting is that this organization was really born with the goal of countering illicit trade and developing these, or rather strengthening the academic side of this very important issue. Many organizations put forth a lot of effort to develop this group in the university, so Senator Pizarro and Elias Castillo and also the representative from Costa Rica from Parlotino, I would like you to know that there are these clear academic organizations for model laws, and we're going to hear from Mauricio now about this issue. Good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to speak with you today. Before starting on my comments for this panel, I would like to thank Mr. Robert Pittenger, President of the Parliamentary Forum, and all of the institutions that invited me to participate in this event, the Panamanian Assembly, CCLAC, Mr. Pizarro, Crime Stoppers from Bermuda and Latin America, and we have such an honor of working together with you in developing initiatives against transnational crime. Mr. Alejo Campos, thank you very much. I would also like to thank Sylvia from Argentina with us today, who is also an academic on this issue. For this topic, I would like to consider two key aspects. First of all, looking at regional security from the problems that we've identified, and second, thinking about the solutions for those problems. When we look at that first aspect, what are the problems, my starting point would be the role that the states have and exercise in fighting external and internal threats. If we consider that criminality, organized transnational crime, is constantly improving, constantly finding new routes, and it is because the states are facing a certain kind of fragility. That fragility is primarily on their borders, whether they are marine borders or land borders, and when I say fragility, I mean the weakness of the state institutions that do not have the capacity to control the borders. For that reason, the challenges that we are facing on our borders are the reflection of the use of force by organized crime, and how they compete with state in use of force. They bring the perspective that regional security is also a national security issue. States are not isolated in their border fragility. When I make this distinction between borders and other parts of the state, it is because organized crime works under the logic that the state is not the enemy, but rather there are, is not the only enemy, but rather there are territorial disputes between different organizations, criminal organizations. For that reason, in the context of transnational organized crime, borders and internal territorial disagreements create a permanent cycle of violence. The second aspect that is solutions for these problems, I think that it is obvious that we must strengthen the state and stop the monopoly on violence by developing philosophies and theories for defense, including border control and internal territorial control. This can happen through information exchange, other levels of cooperation, but regional security depends directly on a training capacity building process. Those who are in charge of maintaining the, protecting the state, must do this. Fighting illicit commerce is part of what we study, and we have contributed in several different ways. Multidimensional security, border security, is a class that we offer from the university in San Paolo, and it has trained more than 200 police officers from Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. These are officers who work together on that triple border. We've also trained up to 40 women who work on port logistics in Latin America. These trainings of professionals is a key point. First of all, because it gives us the opportunity to hear their experiences, their daily challenges, and identify what they think about possible solutions for security. Also, we can take advantage of these trainings to develop knowledge and databases about this knowledge. We're innovating and creating regional security that is designed from the ground up for these professionals. Beyond just these specific trainings, in my perspective, regional security also depends on a collective awareness of this issue. Here, media plays a key role to provide increased support on this issue, manipulating information, fake news. There's a constant development for training for media in Central America from our organization. If reporters are threatened because they cover transnational crime, what is the threat of not covering transnational crime? It is so important to have awareness so that we can cover all of these issues.