United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Topics:

Organ Trafficking

Preventing NGO Corruption in Terrorism

Topic 1: Organ Trafficking

Background:

Once a medical revelation has now transformed into a medical extravagance. This

medical extravagance is the booming demand for organ transplants. The urgency for an organ

transplant has increased exponentially in numbers, as in over 100 countries, there are over

114,000 organ transplants done each year. Due to the rapid increase in demand for organs, an

underlying issue has emerged: numerous patients are dying because they can’t receive a

transplant. For example, in the United States in 2016, 100,791 people were on the waiting list for

a kidney transplant, however, that same year, 4,761 Americans died waiting for a kidney

transplant, which was never received. This crisis of organ shortage is on the rise because of the

recent increase in vital organ failure and the known rising success and enhancements in

posttransplant outcome. It is common for patients to be denied a new functioning organ, because

the rates of donation are so low, which is opening loopholes in the black market. To satisfy the

number of patients on a transplant list, traffickers are finding new ways to supply these patients

with organs. This new tactic is commonly called organ trafficking, where organs are illegally

obtained and traded.

This organized crime first originated in India in 1980 and has now disseminated to

countries around the world. Organ trade has made its presence in the majority of countries

around the world, but has proven most prevalent in developing countries where hospitals are

advanced enough to provide transplant services. Some of these countries include Pakistan,

Philippines, China, Egypt, Turkey, Kosovo, South Africa, etc.. The majority of organ recipient

patients generally come from wealthy countries of the Middle East, East Asia, Western Europe,

and the United States.

The skyrocketing demand for organs has called for an illegal supply, where patients in

need of an organ transplant take advantage of the poor who are willing to sell their organs. The

people involved with this process include brokers, medical professionals, organ recipients, and

persons for organ removal. The organ brokers are responsible for identifying vulnerable groups

and persuading them to give up their organs. They typically target communities where

individuals are suffering from poverty, but are healthy enough to live without their organs.

Generally, medical professionals or transplant surgeons and nurses are involved in the actual

transplant procedure. They are the actors of the actual transplant and the prescription of

necessary drugs. The involvement of medical professionals are least known in this process,

because they are typically less likely to get prosecuted. However, it is possible for there to be

corruption in this field, because these “professionals” might not be fully qualified to be carrying

out the procedure, therefore leading to risks in surgery and post transplant state. The organ

recipients are the ones in need of an organ who frequently tend to travel to receive donor organs

they purchased. This practice is commonly referred to as “transplant tourism”, where organ

recipients travel to another country to receive an organ transplant. This process is preferable,

because it may be cheaper; however many problems can arise from this practice, such as poor

organ matching, insufficient surgical care, unhealthy donors, and post transplant infections.

Lastly, the persons for organ removal can either be victims of organ removal or be persons

willing to sell their organs. Individuals suffering from poverty are willing to sell their organs for

as little as $60. However, there is also trafficking in persons for organ removal, where their

organs are removed without their consent. Organized crimes indicate work behind the scenes

with various methods. In some cases they trick a person into giving up their organ or force the

person into giving it; in other cases, the person sells their organ with a cash payout. For example,

human rights lawyer David Matas, claims in a report that the Chinese government removes and

harvests organs of their prisoners. These prisoners are generally thrown in jail for their political

and religious belief that contradict the government. Hospitals in China are studied to do secret

transplants, where they remove the organs of prisoners without their consent, to make up for the

needed transplants each year.

Studies signify that organ trafficking is inflating globally each year in relation to the

demand for transplant surgeries. According to WHO in 2010, 11,000 organs were sold on the

black market. It has also been estimated that approximately one fifth of all transplanted kidneys

are trafficked each year. Lastly, worldwide, there is an approximation of more than 10,000 black

market operations taking place annually--more than one an hour.

UN Involvement:

Since organ trafficking is highly prevalent worldwide, it is relatively difficult to prevent

in each country. Every country has its own protocol and policies on the issue, which makes the

problem far more complex. However, the United Nations have made efforts to suppress the issue

and enforce global standards.

One way in which the United Nations have become involved is by developing the UN

Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons. This protocol was adopted by

the General Assembly Resolution 55/25 in 2000 and put into action in 2003. It is important,

because it was the first global legally binding document with a compromised definition on

trafficking in persons. In article 3 of the protocol which states the clear definition of trafficking

in persons, it includes the trafficking of persons for the removal of organs. It also includes

arrangements on a wide variety of issues, such as, assistance and protection to victims,

criminalisation, status of victims in receiving states, preventive measures, measures to strengthen

border controls, and the exchange of information and training. The protocol is influential,

because it introduces mandatory prevention, by including mass media information campaigns,

close collaboration with NGOs, and the development of social and economic incentives. The

majority of countries signed and implemented this protocol. One weak aspect of this protocol is

that the implementation of some provisions are lacking, whereas countries are just called upon to

consider the enforcement, because the language in the document is very permissive.

One specific organization that has continuously been involved with resolving this issue is

the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO has spent an extensive amount of time attempting

to counter the issues of illegal organ trafficking. In the Guiding Principles on Human Organ

Transplantation, they state that the trade of human organs is “a violation of human rights and

human dignity”. One of the resolutions developed by WHO, resolution WHA63.22 (2010)

reports that is is necessary to be cautious towards the urgency of post-transplantation inspection

associated with the donation, such as long-term check ups of the living donor, processing and

transplantation of human cells, tissues and organs, and international transaction of

aforementioned information to increase the safety and success of transplantation. In the operative

clauses of the resolution, there are severals steps in which to tackle this problem. One significant

step would be to urge the creation of systems for the donation of organs and increase public

awareness and understanding of the benefits of voluntary provision of organs from deceased and

living donors. This step would relieve the physical, psychological, and social risks that result

from trafficking of organs in humans. Another step is enhancing the safety for donations and

urging the necessity for the best professionals.

Since the issue of organ trafficking has been a major concern of WHO, and has yet to be

successfully prevented, WHO also scheduled another Summit on Organ Trafficking and

Transplant Tourism on 7-8 February 2017. The objective of this summit was to describe the

global extent of organ trafficking, prepare a statement that would be signed by all participants

and administered worldwide, and develop a group of officials who would be responsible of

combating organ trafficking in the long term. Since this summit was held in 2017, there has not

been updates on the progress since implementation, but participants hope the Summit

accomplishes a shift in society, to raise awareness of the excessive level of organ trafficking, and

to lay down a foundation for ethical and necessary solutions. At the summit, there were 75

participants, who all signed the Statement of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Summit on

Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism. The statement covered many enforcements,

encouragements, and frameworks for all participants to follow.

Overall, the United Nations has proven to be highly involved with the issue and has

expressed their plan to be involved until we reach a successful termination of organ trafficking.

Questions to Consider:

Where is organ trafficking most prevalent and why?

Who are most affected by organ trafficking and what are the dangers of this issue?

How do people become aware and involved with organ trafficking?

Who are the main people involved with this issue and how can we prevent their involvement?

Since organ trafficking is an organized crime, how can we be successful in tackling it?

How can we prevent backlash in communities suffering from poverty, when organ trafficking is

decreased, since they use this crime as a source of monetary success?

Work Cited

http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/what-you-need-to-know-about-human-organ-trafficking

http://www.zamun.sk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/StudyGuideGA.pdf

http://news.upickreviews.com/8-countries-where-human-organs-are-harvested

https://borgenproject.org/organ-trafficking-and-the-poor/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/12/07/organ-traffickers-lock-up-p

eople-to-harvest-their-kidneys-here-are-the-politics-behind-the-organ-trade/?utm_term=.ad2bcd2

d8d71

https://www.unodc.org/documents/human-trafficking/2015/UNODC_Assessment_Toolkit_TIP_f

or_the_Purpose_of_Organ_Removal.pdf

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3031784/Inside-illegal-hospitals-performing-thousands-

black-market-organ-transplants-year-200-000-time.html

https://www.osce.org/odihr/19223?download=true

https://treaties.un.org/pages/viewdetails.aspx?src=ind&mtdsg_no=xviii-12-a&chapter=18

https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/legislation-and-case-law-international-legislation-united-nati

ons/united-nations-protocol-prevent_en

http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1492&context=hrbrief

http://www.pas.va/content/accademia/en/events/2017/organ_trafficking.html

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/asia/china-organ-harvesting/

Topic 2: Preventing NGO Corruption in Terrorism

Background:

In the world today, there are over 3.7 million non-governmental organizations (NGOs)

working to better the lives of individuals and countries either in a national or international sense.

These NGOs specialize in varying areas and fields of work such as humanitarian aid, monetary

aid, research, monitoring, development and infrastructure, business and education. However,

many NGOs are vulnerable to corruption, the abuse of power or position for private gain. Such

corruption includes active bribery (one who allows or administers the bribe), passive bribery

(one who receives the bribe), or any act of embezzlement. As terrorism and terrorist activities

have become increasingly prevalent in the world, there is a large problem with terrorist

corruption within NGOs, where terrorist organizations use charitable groups to facilitate and

funnel money into their organizations and power-hold in countries. Foreign donations from

wealthy individuals or countries to NGOs have often become diverted or siphoned directly to

terrorist organizations, such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), Boko Haram, and the

Continuity Irish Republican Army (CIRA), or groups that support such terrorist organizations.

This funneling, facilitating, diverting and siphoning above are all forms of terrorist money

laundering within NGOs.

Humanitarian NGOs have the largest problem with terrorist corruption as they operate in

conflict zones around the world, making them more vulnerable to extortion and theft by local

terrorist organizations and money laundering by the people working inside. United States based

NGOs such as Save the Children, CARE USA, and Mercy-USA working in Syria and Iraq are

examples of prominent NGOs that have a high chance of terrorist corruption because they are

administering foreign aid and humanitarian assistance to countries currently involved in a crisis.

Many international NGOs reject attempts to incorporate security concerns into funding

guidelines, seeing them as politically motivated. As they are privately owned organizations,

NGOs have the capability to decline any form of governmental regulation, and therefore can not

be forced to comply. In most cases, these organizations will fail to prevent the siphoning of funds

as a result of the misjudgement of many humanitarian organs. Though these charities offer

humanitarian service all over the world, funds raised by these charities can be taken advantage of

to support terrorist regimes. Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, recently took advantage of a

United States charity organization the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development to

finance its terrorist activities. In 2010, it was estimated that non-governmental humanitarian

organizations spent about $17 billion US dollars. World Vision International, a NGO working in

the United States, has a budget reaching approximately 2.6 billion US dollars, demonstrating the

extreme scale of many humanitarian organization funds and spending, providing a dangerous

opportunity for terrorist groups to take advantage of.

As NGO corruption in terrorism has increased, many governments have taken action to

combat the threat of terrorist infiltration and funding in NGOs. According to India’s Ministry of

Home Affairs, the country’s NGOs are "vulnerable to the risks of money laundering and terrorist

financing" where foreign funding is being redirected to terrorist groups or organizations. Due to

this belief, the Indian government froze the accounts of as many as 4,000 NGOs for violating

rules on international funding. In December of 2016, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs had also

annulled the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licence, which allows the acceptance

of foreign funding from any source, of 20,000 different NGOs based in the country. Many of

these NGOs were involved in the funding of terrorist groups locally and internationally as well

as insurgency is different states within India. In the United States, the Treasury Department has

designated 18 different NGOs as financing or supporting terrorist activities and groups under the

Executive Order 13224 in 2001. Some of these noted NGOs include Wafa Humanitarian

Organization and Al Rashid Trust, both of whom were key figures in the al-Qaeda charity front.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has also limited its

humanitarian assistance to Syria through NGOs in fear that these charitable donations to NGOs

working near the Syrian conflict will become vulnerable to the finance of terrorist activity.

A notable NGO that has fallen to terrorist corruption is the World Vision operation in

Gaza, led by manager Mohammed El-Halabi. On August 4, 2016, the Israel Security Agency

arrested El-Halabi for funneling 60% of World Vision’s Gaza budget into the terrorist group of

Hamas, which amounted to approximately $50 million. According to the Israel Security Agency,

these siphoned funds were used for the construction of Hamas tunnels, military installations, and

other terrorist activities of the Hamas group. El-Halabi was able to funnel this much of the

budget into terrorist activity by creating fake humanitarian projects and misleading agricultural

associations to be used as a cover for the transfer of money to the Hamas group. As a result of

the allegations and arrest of El-Halabi, World Vision’s funding to projects in Palestinian

territories were suspended by the Australian government. Additionally, Germany was forced to

indefinitely freeze $1.66 million meant for the World Vision project in Gaza, which was

eventually cancelled after El-Halabi’s indictment. The World Vision operation in Gaza should

serve as an example to other organizations working in the area, such as Oxfam, Care, and

Christian Aid, and all NGOs working in countries with heavy conflict and terrorist presence.

UN Involvement:

The United Nations has been working to combat terrorist activities since its adoption of

the UN Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism in December of 1994.

Since 2001, the UN has adopted over 30 resolutions that either condemn acts of terrorism, create

task forces to combat terrorism, or address counter-terrorism. While not much has been done

specifically for terrorist corruption of NGOs, many of these resolutions, committees, and

coalitions have provided tools and measurements for NGOs to follow in order to combat such

corruption. With the establishment of the UN Counter Terrorism Implementation Task Force

(CTITF) in 2005 by the General Assembly, NGOs across the globe were provided with NGO

Policy Tools and Guidelines to assist them with network and franchise terrorism through money

laundering and corruption, overall providing them with the means to strengthen the transparency

of their own organizations.

On October 31, 2003, the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) was adopted by

the UN General Assembly by resolution 58/4 and became the first and only legally binding

universal anti-corruption instrument. With 140 signatories, the UNCAC came into force in

December of 2005 and, as of 12 December 2016, consists of 181 different parties. It was through

the framework of this UN convention that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was

able to train over 100 different NGOs from all over the world to strengthen their own

organizations and come together to help fight corruption. On this day, the UNODC utilized the

UNCAC framework on anti-corruption to train NGOs and equip them with the necessary tools

needed to prevent corruption, including terrorist corruption in heavy conflict areas. Many of the

NGOs being trained were based in Africa, Gaza, Australia, and Ghana, and both the Ghana

Anti-Corruption Coalition and Australian International Anti-Corruption Academy have launched

communication and anti-corruption policy platforms for NGOs within their respective countries

in response to the training. Following the training sessions, over 60% of the trained NGOs

participated in their country review, while about 80% put in place follow up activities in their

regions, proving to be successful for participatory NGOs. The Egyptian organization “Social

Contract Centre” and the Cambodian chapter of Transparency International (TI-Cambodia), two

NGOs involved in the UNODC training, have been successful in recreating simulations of the

training back in their respective countries and strengthening transparency among NGOs in the

country.

Questions to Consider:

1. What can, and should, humanitarian based NGOs do to prevent terrorist corruption within

their organizations?

2. Should there be heavier regulations on NGOs in conflict areas that hold terrorist groups? If so,

how will you get these privately owned organizations to agree to such strict regulation?

3. What should be done about exposed corruption in existing NGOs both in the field of

humanitarian rights and financial aid?

4. Are there any NGOs within your country that have been hindered with terrorist corruption? Do

these NGOs still run and exist in your country?

5. What are ways that the processing of NGO funds can be monitored and regulated to ensure

that no terrorist groups can take advantage of them? What can be done to push away the terrorist

groups themselves?

6. Should an NGOs spending and money intake be taken into consideration when enforcing

regulation? Or should all NGOs be regulated the same way?

Works Cited

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2012/December/unodc-trains-over-100-ngos-to-help-

fight-corruption.html

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/congress/terrorist_financing.htm

https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/122570.htm

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/congress/terrorist_financing.htm

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/01/20/millions-in-un-somalia-aid-diverted-hints-that-some

-went-to-terrorists.html

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/world_vision_international/

http://www.ngo-monitor.org/press-releases/terrorist-aid-hijacking-and-ngo-oversight-failure-lear

ning-from-the-world-vision-case/

http://odihpn.org/magazine/corruption-in-the-ngo-world-what-it-is-and-how-to-tackle-it/b

https://www.un.org/sc/suborg/en/sanctions/1267

https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/143210.htm

http://postcard.news/breaking-massive-cleanup-of-the-corrupt-ngos-as-home-ministry-cancels-fc

ra-licence-of-20000-ngos/

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Sanctions/Pages/faq_other.aspx

http://www.rediff.com/news/report/ngos-vulnerable-to-terror-funding-money-laundering-mha/20

140320.htm

https://www.unodc.org/documents/NGO/Page_2_of_leaflet.pdf