The National Initiative against Organized Crime Pakistan (NIOC), supported by the Global Initiative’s Resilience Fund, is the first-ever independent entity in Pakistan to tackle the challenge of organized crime.
Launched by a group of committed professionals and experts with backgrounds in law enforcement, media and other public-service fields, the NIOC aims at building community resilience and influencing public policy in the drive to combat organized crime in Pakistan.
The NIOC has recognized that, in Pakistan, better coordination and technical assistance are needed in the policymaking process in the spheres of criminal justice and law enforcement sectors - interventions that are required because of Pakistan’s complex governance structure and overlapping groups of stakeholders. This is precisely where the NIOC comes in as it endeavours to identify the gaps and suggest improvements in the systems.
The pilot phase of six months aspires to catalyze a discussion around transnational organized crime in Pakistan, and to facilitate the government's work by developing a set of recommendations based on research, policy briefs and action plans. During this phase, the NIOC will also build partnerships with the community to help them face up to the challenges of organized crime in the country through advocacy and awareness campaigns.
Since the launch of the project, the advisory board of the NIOC has met twice, agreeing that there is a need for a crime- mapping exercise in Pakistan.
It was also decided that the initiative should focus on developing strategies for countering particular organized-crime markets, namely terror financing, drug trafficking, human trafficking and cybercrime. Tariq Khosa, the director of the NIOC, has also actively promoted the work of the group in national and international settings, presenting the NIOC’s activities at high-level conferences in Washington DC and Dubai.
Ian Tennant, manager of the Resilience Fund, said:
We are proud to be supporting the NIOC in Pakistan, which is working to increase resilience to organized crime among the country's communities. Not only does the network engage with experiences of organized crime at the community level, but also brings a wealth of expertise from policy and operational experts, and is already engaging to drive policy change at the national and international levels. The global Resilience Fund community will gain from such expertise and experience.
The National Initiative against Organized Crime is a meaningful endeavour on behalf of a small group of professionals to try and make a big difference in promoting advocacy and spearheading policymaking input in collaboration with different stakeholders all across the country, above all to forge partnership with the communities directly affected by organized crime.
says Tariq Khosa, director of the pilot project and former head of the Federal Investigation Agency, and adds
this initiative would not have been possible without the support of the Global Initiative’s Resilience Fund.
More in-depth information on the strategy and activities of NIOC can be found on its website,
Credits:
Created with images by giselaatje - "hands family old" • Sameer Akhtari - "14th August Independence of Pakistan"