In order to strengthen counter-terrorism efforts at the national and regional levels, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the Government of Nepal, and the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) in March 2015 organised a workshop for South Asian countries on ‘Strengthening International Cooperation in Criminal Matters with a Focus on Terrorism Cases’ in Kathmandu, Nepal. Bringing together high-level policy-makers and criminal justice experts and officials from all eight SAARC countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) and beyond, the workshop provided an opportunity for the sharing of experiences in the area of international and regional cooperation in criminal matters. Experts from INTERPOL and the Commonwealth Secretariat presented their respective cooperation mechanisms, including case work and live examples. Each national delegation provided the workshop participants with information on their existing national legislative frameworks and mechanisms for international cooperation with a particular focus on mutual legal assistance and extradition. While acknowledging the need for such formal mechanisms, workshop participants also underlined the importance of establishing and using ways of informal cooperation.
The workshop – which was conducted under the UNODC global project “Strengthening the legal regime against terrorism,” with financial support from the United States of America – served as a platform for reflection as to the identification of possible gaps and required amendments to existing frameworks.