Declaration - UN Convention against Cybercrime

Your Excellencies,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union and its Member States.
The EU and its Member States would first like to express their appreciation to Viet Nam for hosting the signing ceremony for the UN Convention against Cybercrime.
Cybercrime knows no borders and impacts our societies. It harms our citizens, especially those most vulnerable, such as our children; disrupts our essential services; and inflicts serious financial losses on our individuals and businesses, undermining their trust in the digital economy.

The EU and its Member States are committed to tackling cybercrime through international cooperation. Through Europol and Eurojust, the EU and its Member States facilitate international coordination, foster effective information sharing, and support large-scale operational cooperation to dismantle cybercriminal networks. The EU and its Member States also aim to strengthen global resilience, enhance the capacity of justice and law enforcement authorities, and promote a safe and secure digital environment worldwide, where fundamental rights are respected. In doing so, the EU and its Member States seek, not only to respond to immediate threats, but also to build long-term international partnerships based on trust, cooperation and a shared responsibility to ensure an open, stable and secure cyberspace.

The EU and its Member States welcome the adoption of the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime. The adoption of this Convention is a collective success for all UN members, as it testifies to our collective ability to work together to tackle the global challenge of cybercrime. It illustrates the international community’s growing awareness of the risk that cybercrime poses to our societies, and the need to act together against this threat.

The UN Convention against Cybercrime complements and is consistent with long-standing frameworks for international cooperation, such as the UN Conventions on Transnational and Organised Crime (UNTOC) and Corruption (UNCAC), and the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime. It is a comprehensive instrument with a clearly defined scope that addresses the concerns of the vast majority of the UN Members and fills the gaps in international cooperation, making the world a safer place.

The UN Convention against Cybercrime will reinforce our common fight against the scourge of child sexual abuse and exploitation by criminalising conducts related to child sexual abuse material and the grooming of children for sexual abuse purposes.
It will also enhance international cooperation through its robust conditions and human rights safeguards. Those safeguards prohibit the abuse of the Convention to suppress human rights and fundamental freedoms. They also ensure the protection of personal data and provide for the ability to refuse every request for international cooperation that is made for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing a person on account of that person’s sex, race, language, religion, nationality, ethnic origin or political opinion. Those human rights safeguards are essential to establish the mutual trust that underpins international cooperation in criminal matters and to live up to the commitment of the United Nations and its Member States to protect and promote human rights.

The EU and its Member States firmly commit to the correct and complete implementation of the Convention. It provides a valuable framework to promote, facilitate and support technical assistance and capacity building to enable its Parties, and in particular developing countries, to effectively prevent and combat cybercrime. The EU and its Member States will continue supporting capacity building and providing technical assistance through their numerous programmes and projects.

We will participate and contribute the work of the Conference of the Parties, also to ensure that the Parties implement the Convention in a manner consistent with its spirit, including concerning the safeguarding of human rights. To assist us all in our continued work, we need to preserve and enhance the level of involvement of the multistakeholder community, including non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations, academic institutions and the private sector. Their views and support have helped us achieve this Convention.

For all these reasons, the EU and its Member States decided to join the consensus in the adoption of the final text of this Convention. The EU and several of its Members States are signing the Convention today; other Member States are working to sign it at a later stage.

The EU and its Member States will remain firmly committed to this Convention and to support future State Parties in its implementation.

We encourage all States and organisations to join us in this effort.

Thank you.