Joint effort required to make us safer

Elias Murr says private sector has a big role to play in combating crimes as police can't do the job alone.

Elias Murr, president of Interpol Foundation for a Safer World and former Deputy Prime Minister of Lebanon, told Khaleej Times that combating seven top crimes - for which the UAE has contributed a whopping 50 million Euros - requires governments, law enforcement agencies and private sector to join hands, in order to help make the world a safer place by 2021.
"What we see today is that police cannot do the job alone. The private sector has a big role to play as it represents seven billion people when the police represent only hundreds of thousands," he said on the sidelines of the Unity for Security conference. He noted that programmes on combating terrorism, illicit goods, drugs, vehicle crime, cyber-crime, looting of cultural heritage, as well as creating initiatives that protect vulnerable communities, are already being implemented.
"We will elaborate together and develop these programmes from Abu Dhabi and export them to any country that is willing to be part of it - 190 countries have been supportive of all the programmes and have adopted them."
Murr noted that the organisation has begun working on all seven crime-combating initiatives eight months ago.
"Crime is moving... It is a non-stop job and it will take us around four-and-a-half years from now to finalise all seven programmes and have them available for the 190 countries. "This doesn't mean that today the countries involved in the security cannot benefit from these programmes. They have already been evolved, but to make these programmes much more sufficient and sophisticated, we need around four-and-a-half years from now."
jasmine@khaleejtimes.com