Interpol

The International Criminal Police Organization, better known by its telegraphic address Interpol, is an organization facilitating international police cooperation. It was established as the International Criminal Police Commission in 1923 and adopted its telegraphic address as its name in 1956. It should not be confused with the International Police, which takes on an active uniformed role in policing war-torn countries. Interpol is the world's fifth-largest international organization in terms of the number of member countries, after the Universal Postal Union, FIBA (the International Basketball Federation), the United Nations, and FIFA (Association football's international governing body).

In order to maintain as politically neutral a role as possible, Interpol's constitution forbids its involvement in crimes that do not overlap several member countries, or in any political, military, religious, or racial crimes. Its work focuses primarily on public safety, terrorism, organized crime, war crimes, illicit drug production, drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, human trafficking, money laundering, child pornography, white-collar crime, computer crime, intellectual property crime and corruption.

In 2008, the Interpol General Secretariat employed a staff of 502, representing 78 member countries. Women comprised 42 percent of the staff.

Each member country maintains a National Central Bureau (NCB) staffed by national law enforcement officers.

Interpol maintains a large database charting unsolved crimes and both convicted and alleged criminals. At any time, a member nation has access to specific sections of the database and its police forces are encouraged to check information held by Interpol whenever a major crime is committed. The rationale behind this is that drug traffickers and similar criminals have international ties, and so it is likely that crimes will extend beyond political boundaries.

Interpol maintains a database of lost and stolen identification and travel documents, allowing member countries to be alerted to the true nature of such documents when presented. Passport fraud, for example, is often performed by altering a stolen passport; in response, several member countries have worked to make online queries into the stolen document database part of their standard operating procedure in border control departments. As of early 2006, the database contained over ten million identification items reported lost or stolen, and is expected to grow more as more countries join the list of those reporting into the database.

A member nation's police force can contact one or more member nations by sending a message relayed through Interpol offices.

Contrary to what has been featured in some works of fiction, Interpol officers do not directly conduct inquiries in member countries. Its main role is the passing on of information, not actual law enforcement.

As an international law enforcement agency, Interpol agents offer unique qualities that make them good candidates for fiction, even if such portrayals do not reflect reality.

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Bodies of the EU

The “bodies” of the EU are other organs whose decisions are not generally binding and who act mainly in an advisory capacity or in a specific area.

The Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER). This name is an acronym from the French way of referring to the committee. COREPER is a permanent body of representatives from all of the Member States. It was felt to be necessary because of the fluid Membership of Council as a means of informing Ministers from the Member States and streamlining the process of legislation. In this way individual representatives prepare items of discussion at Council meeting and examine the Commission’s legislative proposals for the individual Ministers. Generally, if a proposal can be agreed upon by COREPER before the Council meeting then it will be accepted without need for lengthy discussion.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has the exclusive right to authorize the issue of euros. It sets the short-term interests rates for those states who have the euro as their currency. It has certain enforcement powers so that it can bring national banks, who fail to comply with their obligations under EC law before the Court of Justice. The decision-making bodies of the ECB are the Executive Board and the Governing Council.

The European Investment Bank’s basis mission is to invest in projects that promote the objectives of the EU. It is not financed by the EU budged but by borrowing in the financial markets and also from the Member States. The bank only invests in projects according to strict criteria:

- the project must help achieve EU objectives, e.g. making small businesses more competitive;

- the project must help mainly disadvantaged regions;

- the project must help to attract other sources of funding.

The Economic and Social Committee & the Committee of the Regions. Both institutions were established to assist the Council and the Commission. They act only in an advisory capacity and have no real decision-making power. The Committee of Regions consists of representatives of regional and local bodies and the Economic and Social Committee consists of representatives from producers, farmers, carriers, workers, craftsmen, professional occupations and the general public. These representatives are appointed by the Council. Both bodies have 317 members. The committee shall not exceed 350 in number.

The European Ombudsman. The position of Ombudsman was created in the TEU. The European Ombudsman operates in the same way as all Ombudsmen and is an intermediary between European citizens and EU institutions. The Ombudsman is elected by the European Parliament for a period of five years. The Ombudsman acts independently and investigates examples of maladministration. In an EU context “maladministration” can concern:

- unfairness;

- discrimination;

- abuse of power;

- lack of information or refusal to give information;

- unnecessary delay in making decisions;

- using incorrect procedures.

The Court of Auditors consists of 27 members, one from each member states. The members are appointed by the Council, in consultation with the Parliament. Each member is assigned a specific sector of activity in relation to the accounts of the Union. The Court of Auditors conducts annual audits and submits observations and opinions on matters requested by other Community institutions. It may also carry out investigations in the member states concerning the application of Union law by that state, e.g. the collection of custom duties.

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Criminals at Sea

The smuggling and trafficking of human beings has increased through the world, owing to the globalization process and other factors. The problem is exacerbated in size and seriousness by the growing involvement of organized crime groups. The smuggling of migrants by these organized crime groups disrupts established immigration policies of destination countries and often involves human rights abuses. Containers are rarely inspected on their journey, and provide easy cover for smugglers to transport drugs, weapons and people, especially to European ports, which attract tens of thousands of illegal migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia each year. Dozens of stowaways have suffocated in containers. Stowaways smuggled onboard commercial vessels by human traffickers can cause unforeseeable problems, too. Turkey was a prime transit route for human traffickers for many years. Law enforcement efforts, however, seem to have started to pay off recently, as southern European authorities report that the traffickers now prefer Tunisian and Libyan routes to transit their human cargo instead of Turkey.

On November 21, 2001, the U.S. Navy stated that it could extend the antiterrorism campaign to counter piracy, gunrunning, drug and human trafficking. Not only the Al Qaeda network, but also terrorist groups elsewhere such as the Sri Lankan LTTE and the Kurdish PKK, have been engaged in “commercial” activities such as trafficking in narcotics, arms and human beings. The LTTE, for example, not only owned and operated a fleet of ten ocean-going freighters flying Panamanian, Honduran and Liberian flags, but also hijacked commercial vessels carrying cargo valuable to the Tamil Tigers, such as the 1997 hijacking of the freighter “Stillus Limassul”, loaded with more than 30,000 81 mm mortal rounds, worth over three million dollars. In 1994, the LTTE shipped 50 metric tons of RDX explosives on board one of their own freighters, operated by a front company called Carlton Trading, from a Ukrainian Black Sea port via the Turkish Straits to Sri Lanka.

A developing trend in international terrorism in the last decade is called narco-terrorism. Turkish authorities are aware that most of the human smuggling, which takes place in Turkish waters is connected with the terrorist organization PKK. Turkey has historically remained a key transshipment point for drug trafficking because of its desirable geographical location connecting Europe to Asia. From the late 1970s, a new trend toward bigger and more efficient criminal organizations was observed. Especially from the mid- 1980s terrorist organizations with quasi-political agendas started to become involved in narcotics trafficking. In the beginning these terrorist groups entered the business mainly to finance their arms supplies. It has been documented in many instances that these Turkish terrorist groups either dealt or partnered with certain Eastern Bloc criminals and intelligence services in drugs-for-arms deals.

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North American Free Trade Agreement

NAFTA is the product of a natural progression to a global economy. It began with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, continued with the Trade and Tariffs Act, and officially began with the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States and a signed promise for such developments between Mexico and the United States only a year later. Once it was finally ratified in 1992, it enabled free movement, shipment, and trade between the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

One of the primary alterations that NAFTA applies is the standardization of each country’s Customs. Verification, record keeping, and rules of origin are all determined by the NAFTA Secretariat to ensure that there are as few conflicts as possible. Ultimately, it was applied to make the exporting and importing process as well as travel more efficient.

Countries included in NAFTA are Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

The problems surrounding NAFTA are economic and political in nature. It has been suggested that NAFTA is responsible for the loss of jobs in Canada and the United States as well as a reduction in wages and worker rights in Mexico.

NAFTA is essentially a trilateral trade agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico that enables free movement, shipment, and trade between the three countries in order to combine the strength of the three economies. Part of the exporting process is verification that persons can legally travel between country lines (usually in the form of passport, travel visa, or other form of verification often accompanied by paperwork) and that the goods being exported or imported can legally enter the country. Under NAFTA, this has been expedited to the effect that those exporting (or importing, but it’s not required by both) must simply apply for a Certificate of Origin. Once this process is completed, the exporter can legally transfer the goods with the benefit of NAFTA sanctions between the United States, Canada, or Mexico with no further need for verification.

NAFTA also grants the provision of temporary entry of business persons, whereby citizens of the three countries can travel freely between them as long as they meet one of five requirements:

- Engagements that are part of the sales or manufacturing process

- Those dispersed from parent companies that are conducting substantial trade within the country to which the business person is being dispersed

- Investors intent on committing a substantial investment within the target country

- Those transferring to another location of a parent company

- Those practicing in specific fields, including economists, attorneys, accountants, and architects, for example

NAFTA, or the North American Trade Agreement, applies to all countries contained within North America, which is Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Canada was initially opposed to a North American Free Trade Agreement despite the fact that it was first to sign a trade agreement with the United States in 1988. Free trade was unpopular among Canadian politicians and Canada felt that it would render itself vulnerable to the shadow of the United States economy.

As an idea born of the United States, NAFTA is probably most aligned with U.S. interests. In fact, NAFTA has oft been accused of an expansion of the U.S. economy rather than a merger between three economies. Nonetheless, many sanctions were offered to protect the interests of Mexico as well as Canada and little has been done by the U.S. government or U.S. organizations that have affected either Canada or Mexico in any negative way.

Reporting economic growth as well as lost wages and jobs, Mexico has generally considered NAFTA bittersweet. Accordingly, just as there are complaints about NAFTA both from Mexican and United States politicians, there have been just as many benefits touted from the same origins. While employment has reduced in some sectors, employment has risen in others; while wages have lowered in some lower-income jobs, the GDP of Mexico overall has seen steady growth since the ratification of NAFTA. The overall consensus remains that NAFTA is a positive influence on North America overall and thus remains in effect.