MINUTES OF NIOC’S 41st ADVISORY BOARD MEETING

By CGR On Mar 30, 2023

The 41st Advisory Board Meeting was held on Thursday 30 March 2023 at 12 pm. The following participated: Advisory Board: Tariq Parvez, Zahid Hussain, Manzoor Ahmed and Zubair Habib. Samina Ahmed and Jawaid Akhtar could not attend due to their other commitments. NIOC Directorate was represented by the following: Tariq Khosa, Sarmad Saeed, Kaleem Imam, Saroop Ijaz, Ammar Jaffri, Azam Khan, Nawaz Nadeem and Hassan Sardar.

The following matters came under discussion:

1) CGR-NIOC released the UNTOC Review Process implementation report for 2022 on behalf of the Civil Society Alliance on 14 March 2023. It was disseminated to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GITOC) in Vienna, UNODC Civil Society Unit and UNTOC Secretariat in Vienna, Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, Vienna.

2) The report containing the civil society perspective was appreciated by UNODC, GITOC and Alliance. It is being reflected as international best practice by UNODC-CSU.

3) As the UNTOC Review Process continues in 2023, CGR-NIOC has constituted three Working Groups on UNTOC Legal Aspects (Convener Barrister Umar Mahmood of Center for Human Rights); Human rights and Victims’ Perspective (Co-conveners: Saroop Ijaz of Human Rights Watch and Fatima Haider of The Grief Directory); and Transnational Organized Crime (Convenor: Tariq Parvez of NIOC).

4) All three WGs will hold Focus Group Discussions and come up with Position Papers on behalf of the civil society.

5) UNTOC and Protocols will be discussed in the Constructive Dialogues in Vienna in May 2023 as well as during the CCPCJ the same month in Vienna. CGR-NIOC will represent Pakistan’s civil society perspective.

6) On a suggestion by the UNODC-CSU, CGR-NIOC will plan a 2-day international conference in Islamabad in mid-November 2023 to focus on TOC and UNTOC Pilot Initiative follow-up. A proposal in this regard has been shared with UNODC-CSU and GITOC.

7) WG on TOC will focus on Human Trafficking and UNTOC TIP Protocol. WG on Human Rights will examine the draft Toolkit being developed by UNODC in the context of human rights and gender equality. WG of legal experts will focus on responses to the TIP Protocols articles under review in Cluster-1.

8) An engagement strategy for the current year with the Civil Society Alliance will be worked out by the Deputy Director NIOC Sarmad Saeed.