Nairobi Workshop on Transnational Crimes

kotarski Judicial Capacity Building, Kenya’s International and Organised Crimes Division

On 1-2 July, the Wayamo Foundation hosted a workshop in Nairobi for investigators from the Kenya Police Criminal Investigation Department and prosecutors from the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The workshop featured special guest Robert J. Currie, Associate Professor of Law, Dalhousie University, Canada and Reiko Fujibayashi, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). On June 30, Wayamo hosted a workshop for court reporters and law students with professor Currie. Read the WORKSHOP REPORT.

While international criminal law has focused on the prosecution of core international crimes—genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression—our post-Cold War, post-9/11 world has also seen the growth of transnational crimes of international concern, such as terrorism, money laundering, organised crime, and human and narcotics trafficking. This has been accompanied by a focus on transnational crimes of domestic concern, which are domestic crimes that involve the jurisdiction of more than one state.

With certain types of crimes are increasingly being perpetrated across national borders, a unified regional or global response is required. Such a response has taken the form of transnational criminal law, which covers both the international treaty obligations that require States to introduce specific substantive measures into domestic criminal law systems, and the system of inter-state cooperation with mechanisms of mutual legal assistance and extradition.

Topics: 

  • The basic framework of public international law
  • How States exercise jurisdiction over transnational crimes
  • Relevant treaties and customary international law in transnational criminal matters
  • Different crimes covered by Transnational Criminal Law, and analysis of the current legal provisions for each crime
  • Implementation/Domestication: how should domestic lawyers and judges interpret their laws to accord with the international law on point?
  • International cooperation & its challenges (police cooperation, extradition and mutual legal assistance)
  • Protection of human rights in Transnational Criminal Law
  • The publication of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report: Transnational Organized Crime threat assessment for Kenya and Eastern Africa