“In so many ways, illicit drugs and crime and development are bound to each other. If countries are denied the rule of law and justice, development is jeopardised, and societies weakened by the lack of sustainable development can become the staging areas for the criminal networks,” said the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC), Yury Fedotov, at the opening of the 56th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna.

During the five-day session, more than 1,000 representatives from Member States and civil society, will discuss issues ranging from international cooperation in combating drugs to public health and safety concerns, including the threat of new psychoactive substances.

In the area of international drug control, Mr. Fedotov said, “we must also ask ourselves tough questions about whether we have managed to reduce the global drug threat. There are no easy answers.”

Mr. Fedotov noted that, in recent decades, the production and consumption of cocaine has declined and the majority of opium cultivation and production is localized mainly in Afghanistan. However, he added that these trends were offset by the rise of synthetic drugs, as well as new psychoactive substances.

“The overall prevalence of drug use is not decreasing. Illicit drugs kill more than 500 men, women and even children every day,” he said, adding that UNODC is working hard to respond to these issues by introducing regional and country programmes that deliver assistance where it is needed, building strong partnerships and promoting political commitment at the highest international levels.

Providing alternatives to suppliers is also crucial, Mr. Fedotov said, stressing that there can be no successful eradication without complementary alternative development projects for farmers. The response must also focus on the demand side, he said, calling for a balanced approach to deliver real solutions to those in need and to reduce the health and social consequences of drug abuse.

UNODC is working in the spirit of the drug conventions to deliver results in the areas of prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and social reintegration, Mr. Fedotov said.

“Building synergies between our approaches to law, health and alternative development is a necessity. All of these activities must also be reinforced by a sense of shared responsibility, which we should never allow to be weakened,” he added.

This year’s CND session precedes a high-level review of the implementation of the Political Declaration and Plan of Action on International Cooperation towards an Integrated and Balanced Strategy to Counter the World Drug Problem in 2014, which will be followed by a Special Session of the UN General Assembly on the drug problem in 2016.

Last month, three Afghan officials – the Minister of Justice, Habibullah Ghalib; the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Hussein Banoo Ghazanfar; and the Deputy Interior Minister, Mirza Mohammad Yarmand – strongly condemned the wrongful imprisonment of women and girls on charges of ‘running away,’ which is often used by prosecutors as evidence of a woman’s intent to commit adultery, or zina, which is a crime under Sharia law.

“The Government needs to ensure that law enforcement authorities do not arrest, detain and prosecute any further cases of ‘running away’,” said the Country Director of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), Ingibjorg Gisladottir.

She added, “Guidance that clearly states that ‘running away’ is not a crime under Afghan law will serve to aid criminal law enforcement and end practices that discriminate against women.”

Intent alone is not sufficient to prosecute a women for zina, UN Women said in a news release, adding that “these arbitrary or selective applications of the law also violate fundamental rights and guarantees protected under international law, including the right to life, security of the person, freedom of movement, the right to health, and arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, family, or home.”

More than two thirds of the 700 girls who are currently in prisons across the Central Asian country have been detained for ‘running away’ from home or for their intentions to commit adultery. UN Women called on the Government to unconditionally release all prisoners convicted under these charges and prosecute those responsible for perpetrating violence against them.

“The Government should work to ensure the protection of these women and girls, including provision of appropriate support services, and bring all perpetrators of violence against women to justice,” said Gisladottir.

Afghan women and girls generally flee their homes to escape forced marriage and other forms of violence – acts that are criminalized by the law on Elimination of Violence against Women, according to the UN agency.

“The Law on Elimination of Violence against Women is viewed by UN Women as a milestone in terms of legal protection of women’s rights. If fully implemented, it can go a long way in protecting and promoting the rights of all Afghan women and girls,” the agency stated.

Enacted in August 2009, the law criminalizes child marriage, forced marriage, selling and buying women for the purpose or under the pretext of marriage, and offering girls for dispute resolution.

It also criminalizes forced isolation, forcing a woman to commit self-immolation and denying women the right to education, work and health services, and prescribes preventive measures for implementation by seven Government ministries.

Unfortunately Hungary’s record in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice has not been particularly impressive, and as Zuroff states: “ Csatáry had to be declared an official suspect” before even considering his questioning or arrest. Hence the mobilization of the journalists, who proceeded to photograph Csatáry and report his whereabouts on Sunday, 15th July 2012. However, it must be said that the tabloid acted following details the Wiesenthal Center had released last September; which were acquired by the Center after paying an informer 25,000 dollars.

The most interesting part of the story seems to be that Csatáry was not in hiding. He was living in Budapest under his real name. What is more, the Canadian authorities had found out about his past in 1997, when his false identity was unmasked, and his Canadian citizenship was revoked by the federal Cabinet for lying on his citizenship application. In fact, Csatáry fled Hungary in 1949, claiming to be a Yugoslav national, settled in Montreal as an art dealer, and became a Canadian citizen in 1955. When his real identity was found out, he quietly fled the country before being deported – he was sentenced to death by a court in Czechoslovakia in absentia in 1948.

Is the monstrous so banal to escape our glance, and be able to hide among us, undisturbed? Or is it time that dims our sight, soothes the pain, and inclines us to forget? To let go of such repugnant people is easier than to deal with them, as the simple truth of their most heinous actions disturbs our safe, comfortable lives; it reminds us that most actions are but different means chosen to arrive at what is considered ‘living well.’

Maybe criminals of war go out of fashion, as trends do; after all, there are so many new ones each year. Or maybe there is only this uneasy truth; the survivors die of old age, and the memory of the pain that racked their entire body dies as well. And as this happens, their tyrant is safer and safer.

Time seems to be every war criminal’s best friend. This is the simple, banal reason, a person like László Csizsik-Csatáry was allowed to have a life, when he crushed so many of them. In 1944, Csizsik-Csatáry was the Royal Hungarian Police commander in the city of Kassa in Hungary (now Košice in Slovakia). He was in charge of a Jewish ghetto and helped organize the deportation of Jews people to Auschwitz. Witnesses testified he exercised his authority very inhumanely. According to documents uncovered by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, he took pleasure in beating women, and forced them to dig ditches in the frozen ground with their bare hands. As Hungary’s top holocaust historian Laszlo Karsai told to ABC News, “there are two testimonies of German officers in Kosice who had to stop him from torturing Jewish women.” Peter Feldmajer, the president of the Jewish community in Hungary, reveals that “Csizsik-Csatáry created a camp for torturing the rich so they would confess where they have hidden the money.”

What is the course of action a man such as this one deserves? What is the reaction of people confronted by a war criminal who opens his door to journalists in his underpants and socks, at 97? Can this image of vulnerability hinder the exercise of justice? It might.

When asked if he is confident the Hungarian justice authorities would bring Csatáry to trial quickly, Efraim Zuroff said: “How can I be confident? I can’t be confident of that. I can hope that it can happen, the only good news is that he’s very healthy, as far as we know he’s still driving a car.”

To bring to trial László Csizsik-Csatáry is a matter of historical justice. To record into history that this criminal of war has underwent a trial is a matter of ethics, and a responsibility of the present towards the future generations. Only justice recorded in history can stay with us long enough to offer closure, and to bring resolution of this significant event in the lives of the victims in Hungary and Slovakia.

It is a sad thought to imagine that the present could be so forgetful to prevent the trial from taking place, to hypocritically dismiss László Csizsik-Csatáry’s responsibility due to his age. No crime is a thing of the past till the people who committed it are brought to justice; time cannot wash away a crime, not even when it is unspoken of for decades.

“Heroin, cocaine and other drugs continue to kill around 200,000 people a year, shattering families and bringing misery to thousands of other people, insecurity and the spread of HIV,” the Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov, told the General Assembly today, during a special thematic debate on drugs and crime as a threat to development.

“At present, only around one quarter of all farmers involved in illicit drug crop cultivation worldwide have access to development assistance – if we are to offer new opportunities and genuine alternatives, this needs to change,” Mr. Fedotov said.

The Assembly’s debate coincides with the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, observed on 26 June, and was also the forum for Mr. Fedotov’s launch of UNODC’s flagship study, the 2012 World Drug Report.

In his opening remarks to the gathering, the Assembly’s President, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, said that the debate will lay the foundation for on-going discussions on how Member States can enable sustainable development to flourish, while at the same time rooting out criminal networks.

“Development and the fight against crime are long-term processes that require our full and persistent attention – it is only by making this fight against crime a central pillar in the development agenda that we can promote a sustainable and effective response,” Mr. Al-Nasser said.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in his remarks to the event, said that drugs and crime threaten one of the world’s most important goals: ensuring global sustainable development.

“We cannot afford to cede ground to those who thrive on lawlessness and who use countries as stepping stones for the delivery of illicit drugs,” he said. “We must work together to promote the rule of law and help countries bring criminals to justice, while fully respecting human rights and ensuring proportionality in our law enforcement responses.”

He added that efforts to advance sustainable development should incorporate the need to combat illicit drugs and crime, while also ensuring that drug control and anti-crime strategies are sensitive to the needs of development.

In his speech to the Assembly, Mr. Fedotov said that with the approaching 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), there is an increasing recognition that organized crime and illicit drugs impede the attainment of those goals.

There are a total of eight MDGs, ranging from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, all by the target date of 2015. They form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and leading development institutions and have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.

The UNODC chief said that drug-producing and drug-consuming countries alike have a stake in fighting the illicit drug trade, adding that Governments should not forget that illicit drugs also affect health and security globally.

Drug use appears to be spilling over into countries lying on trafficking routes, such as in West and Central Africa, which are witnessing rising numbers of cocaine users, and Afghanistan and Iran, which are grappling with the highest rates of opium and heroin use.

Mr. Fedotov noted that as developing countries emulate the lifestyles of industrialized nations, drug consumption will probably increase, placing a heavier burden on countries ill equipped to deal with burgeoning drug demand. International support should therefore aim at strengthening the capacity of vulnerable nations to confront that challenge, he said.

The 2012 World Drug Report finds that although global patterns of illicit drug use, production and health consequences largely remained stable in 2012, opium production had rebounded to previous high levels in Afghanistan, the world’s biggest opium producer.

In addition, lower overall levels of cultivation and production of opium and coca have been offset by rising levels of synthetic drug production.

Around 230 million people, or five per cent of the world’s adult population, aged 15 to 64, are estimated to have used an illicit drug at least once in 2010, according to the Report. Problem drug users, mainly heroin- and cocaine-dependent persons, number about 27 million, roughly 0.6 per cent of the world adult population, or 1 in every 200 people.

On opium, the Report says that Afghanistan has returned to high levels of opium production. Global opium production amounted to 7,000 tons in 2011, up from 2010, when plant diseases wiped out almost half the crop yields and triggered steep price rises in Afghanistan. Myanmar remained the world’s second largest poppy-crop grower and opium producer after Afghanistan, with cultivation up by 14 per cent in 2011 and a nine per cent share of global opium production.

On cocaine, the Report finds that the number of estimated annual cocaine users in 2010 ranged from 13.3 million to 19.7 million – or around 0.3 to 0.4 of the global adult population. The major markets for cocaine continue to be North America, Europe and Australia. The United States saw cocaine use decrease from 3.0 per cent in 2006 to 2.2 per cent in 2010 among adults, and in Europe cocaine use remains stable but continues to rival use in the United States. However, cocaine use is up in Australia and South America, and it is also spreading to parts of Africa and Asia.

The 2012 World Drug Report finds that the use and global seizures of amphetamine-type stimulants, the second most widely used drugs worldwide, remained largely stable. However, in 2010, methamphetamine seizures, of around 45 tons, more than doubled those of 2008, due to significant seizures in Central America and East and South-East Asia. In Europe, ‘ecstasy’ pill seizures more than doubled, from 595 kilograms in 2009 to 1.3 tons in 2010, indicating a stronger market on that continent.

There are between 119 million and 224 million estimated cannabis users worldwide, according to the Report, with Europe the world’s biggest market for cannabis resin, in the form of hashish, mainly supplied by Morocco, although its relative importance is declining. Most European Union countries report the increasing indoor cultivation of cannabis herb, known as marijuana, possibly reflecting a growing preference for marijuana over hashish.

The Report also considers the non-medical use of prescription drugs, noting that in many countries there is more non-medical use of prescription drugs than of controlled substances, other than cannabis.

The outcome of the Assembly’s special thematic debate on drugs and crime as a threat to development will include a President’s Summary, which will be transmitted to the 13th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in Doha, Qatar, in 2015.