On 6 and 7 June 2023, the OSCE Secretariat's Transnational Threats Department (TNTD) and the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities (OCEEA), in co-operation with the 2023 OSCE Chairpersonship of North Macedonia (CiO) and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), held a regional multi-stakeholder event in Skopje, North Macedonia to discuss how to strengthen youth resilience to organized crime and corruption.
The need to enhance youth education and awareness of the dangers of organized crime and corruption in order to equip young people with the knowledge necessary to reduce their risk of becoming either victims or offenders was one of the key takeaways from the event. Participants also highlighted that stronger inter-institutional and whole-of-society co-operation is needed to identify and jointly address risk factors for youth engagement in criminality at an early stage. Finally, participants stressed the importance of youth dialogue and engagement to prevent organized crime and corruption.
OSCE Chairman-in-Office Bujar Osmani said: "We need to actively engage young people by providing national, regional and cross-regional platforms for dialogue and experience-sharing, and by giving youth a voice in the design and development of policies and initiatives to prevent organized crime and corruption."
The event gathered representatives from several ministries, including Internal Affairs, Justice and Education, Ombudsman Offices and Anti-Corruption Agencies from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia, alongside academia, civil society and young people from the region. It enabled policymakers and practitioners to discuss youth crime trends, identify capacity needs and exchange best practices related to youth crime prevention - all with direct input from young people themselves.
OSCE CiO's Special Representative on Youth Memet Zhaku said: "As the next generation of politicians, entrepreneurs and civil society actors, young people have an important role to play in building a culture of lawfulness and integrity across all levels of society. They are key to strengthening whole-of-society resilience to organized crime and corruption".
The director of GI-TOC's Observatory of Illicit Economies in South Eastern Europe, Fatjona Mejdini emphasized that: "Civil society plays a crucial role in helping youth build resilience against organized crime and corruption and empowers them to become positive agents of change in their communities".
The workshop was held in the framework of the OSCE-wide multi-year project "Enhancing youth crime and drug use prevention through education on legality and awareness campaigns addressing threats of organized crime and corruption" funded by Italy. Other donors supporting this project are Andorra, Germany and Poland.
