In 2012, half of Afghan citizens paid a bribe while requesting a public service and nearly 30 per cent of them paid a bribe for a private sector service, states the survey on trends and patterns of corruption produced by the High Office for Oversight and Anticorruption and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

While these figures are high, there is evidence of progress, as 59 per cent of the adult population had to pay at least one bribe to a public official in 2009. However, the frequency of bribery has increased from 4.7 bribes to 5.6 bribes per bribe-payer and the average cost of a bribe has risen from $158 to $214, a 29 per cent increase in real terms.

“The bribes that Afghan citizens paid in 2012 equals double Afghanistan’s domestic revenue or one fourth of the Tokyo pledge,” said the UNODC Regional Representative, Jean Luc Lemahieu, referring to the international donors’ conference held in Japan in July, in which $16 billion was pledged for Afghanistan’s economic development in the next four years on the condition that the Government reduce corruption before receiving all of the money.

“Nobody doubts the seriousness of the issue, the art is to design the correct strategy to remedy the situation,” said Mr. Lemahieu.

While corruption is seen by most Afghans as one of the most urgent challenges facing their country, it seems to be increasingly embedded in social practices, with patronage and bribery being an acceptable part of day-to-day life.

The survey, which was based on a sample of 6,700 Afghan citizens over the age of 18 across the country, stated that 68 per cent of those interviewed considered it acceptable for a civil servant to top up a low salary by accepting small bribes from service users. Similarly, 67 per cent of citizens considered it sometimes acceptable for a civil servant to be recruited on the basis of family ties and friendship networks.

In most cases, bribes are paid to obtain better or faster services, while in others bribes are offered to influence deliberations and actions such as police activities and judicial decisions, thereby eroding the rule of law and trust in institutions.

In particular, the survey points to the education sector as one of the most vulnerable to corruption, with the percentage of those paying a bribe to a teacher jumping from 16 per cent in 2009 to 51 per cent in 2012.

“Afghans know that corruption is eating at the fabric of their society,” said Mr. Lemahieu. “The solution is not only to be found within the Government but also within the wider community.”

“Transnational organized crime reaches into every region, and every country across the world. Stopping this transnational threat represents one of the international community’s greatest global challenges,” said UNODC’s Executive Director, Yury Fedotov, in a news release. “Crucial to our success is our ability to raise public awareness and generate understanding among key decision and policymakers.”

The $870 billion turnover from transnational organized crime is six times the amount of official development assistance, and is comparable to 1.5 per cent of the global domestic product, or seven per cent of the world’s exports of merchandise, according to UNODC.

Drug trafficking is the most lucrative form of business for criminals, with an estimated value of $320 billion a year. Human trafficking brings in about $32 billion annually, while some estimates place the global value of smuggling of migrants at $7 billion per year.

The environment is also exploited: trafficking in timber generates revenues of $3.5 billion a year in South-East Asia alone, while elephant ivory, rhino horn and tiger parts from Africa and Asia produces $75 million annually in criminal turnover, UNODC notes. At $250 billion a year, counterfeiting is also a high earner for organized crime groups.

In addition to the financial costs involved, the agency’s awareness-raising campaign seeks to highlight the human costs of these criminal activities to societies. Each year, countless lives are lost to drug-related health problems and violence and firearm deaths, among other causes. In addition, some 2.4 million people are victims of human trafficking.

“The UNODC-led campaign also illustrates that despite being a global threat, the effects of transnational organised crime are felt locally. Crime groups can destabilize countries and entire regions, undermining development assistance in those areas and increasing domestic corruption, extortion, racketeering and violence,” UNODC noted in a news release. “The campaign drives the message that someone ultimately suffers and there is always a victim.”

The campaign, which is being rolled-out through online channels and international broadcasters, consists of 30 and 60-second Public Service Announcements in multiple languages, a set of posters, a series of fact sheets and various online banners that illustrate that despite being a global threat, the effects of transnational organized crime are felt locally. The campaign is also being promoted through various social media channels.

“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.