UN body unanimously adopts Mexico's arms trafficking resolution
The Palermo Convention's Conference of the Parties approved the text in Vienna. It targets money laundering and criminal liability for companies.
A resolution presented by Mexico against illicit firearms trafficking was adopted unanimously on Friday by the Conference of the Parties to the Palermo Convention, the UN treaty against transnational organized crime, Mexico's Foreign Ministry said.
The vote came in Vienna at the close of the 13th Conference, which met from Oct. 19 to 23. The text falls under the Firearms Protocol, which supplements the convention. The ministry describes it as a way to keep shrinking the room that criminal organizations have to fuel violence and conflict around the world.
The resolution sets four lines of work for the coming years: corruption and money laundering tied to arms trafficking, criminal liability for companies that facilitate it, the use of new technologies against the crime, and data collection to study how it operates.
The ministry's statement quotes no official and does not say how many states parties took part. It does not publish the text or its document number either, so it is unclear whether any country entered reservations or explained its vote.
Mexico has brought the issue to Vienna before. At the tenth Conference, in October 2020, it introduced another resolution, on cooperation against illicit arms trafficking, and it passed by consensus with the backing of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay and the European Union.
That one called for stronger international cooperation. This year's targets the money, the companies and the technology.
