All Aboard: The Role of Shipping in Combating Crimes that Affect the Environment
29 September 2026 | 10:00–11:00 (GMT+4) | Room 2A | Hybrid event
Organized by: United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) | United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) | World Shipping Council (WSC)
Global maritime supply chains are essential to international trade, moving vast volumes of goods across borders every day. Their scale and complexity, however, also create opportunities for transnational organized criminal groups to move illicit goods, conceal criminal activity and generate substantial profits. High-volume container traffic, multi-country routes, vulnerabilities at ports, corruption and collusion can all be exploited to hide illicit commodities within legitimate cargo flows.
Crimes that affect the environment — including trafficking in wildlife, timber, fish and fisheries products, as well as the illegal movement of minerals and hazardous waste — can intersect with corruption, money laundering, drug trafficking, trafficking in persons, smuggling of migrants, cargo theft and other forms of organized crime. These illicit activities may converge along the same routes, exploit the same vulnerabilities and make use of the same legitimate transport infrastructure.
With hundreds of millions of container movements each year, comprehensive physical inspection is neither feasible nor practical. Identifying high-risk shipments therefore increasingly relies on intelligence-led targeting, risk-based screening, technology and effective information sharing. Cooperation with the shipping industry is particularly important, given its central role in global supply chains and the information and operational insight it can provide to help identify and disrupt illicit flows.
This ancillary meeting will bring together representatives of the shipping industry, public authorities and international organizations to examine how criminal activity can be detected and disrupted across maritime supply chains. The discussion will focus on the role of the shipping sector and on how public-private cooperation, trusted information sharing, technology and risk-based approaches can help prevent the exploitation of legitimate maritime trade.
The meeting will provide an opportunity to:
Examine how organized criminal groups exploit maritime transport and containerized supply chains, including for crimes that affect the environment and other serious offences.
Explore how shipping companies, public authorities and international organizations can identify and respond to risks through red-flag indicators, intelligence sharing, technology and risk-based cargo screening.
Identify practical opportunities for stronger public-private cooperation, information sharing and capacity-building.
AGENDA
OPENING REMARKS
• Mr Leif Villadsen, Acting Director, UNICRI
MODERATED PANEL DISCUSSION: STRENGTHENING THE INTEGRITY OF MARITIME SUPPLY CHAINS
• Mr Rafael Benitez, Director of Social Rights, Health and Environment, Council of Europe
• Mr Tao Zhiqiang, Programme Officer, Environment Team, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
• Mr Lars Kjaer, Senior Advisor, World Shipping Council
• Representative of a UAE federal authority [TBC]
The discussion will address criminal exploitation of maritime supply chains; the role of shipping companies; information and intelligence sharing; and technology and risk-based cargo targeting.
DISCUSSION WITH THE FLOOR – Q&A
CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS
The moderator will summarize the principal conclusions and identify possible areas for follow-up cooperation, research and capacity-building. Possible follow-up actions include a short outcome note, mapping of existing public-private information-sharing mechanisms, and regional capacity-building or dialogue.
The scale of global maritime trade makes inspecting every container impossible. Combating illicit flows therefore requires something different: knowing where to look, sharing the right information and bringing everyone with a role in the supply chain on board.
Join us in Abu Dhabi or online to explore how the shipping sector can help turn the scale and reach of global maritime trade into a strength in combating crimes that affect the environment.
Link to partecipate online: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/310045539874216?p=Y10ylMdVrkP0tl9796
For further information about the event, please contact: Mr Matthew Burnett Stuart, UNICRI (matthew.burnettstuart@un.org)