CYIL 2012

“SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS“ IN THE UNITED NATIONS CHARTER… In conclusion, private homes, schools and hospitals should be the places for the intergenerational transmission of legitimate aspirations, norms and values, the places for developmental crime prevention, whether psychological and/or social. While such a first-to-second generation transmission still has its various problems, it follows that to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” really starts with the intimate contacts in those places. This is a very important conclusion for the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies. 3. Countering criminal traditions Another important conclusion for them is that the progressive character of the UN Charter calls for looking at how “succeeding generations” may indeed save the world from the scourge of wars. In other words, how can the UN prevent wars from happening, or how can the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies facilitate advancing this objective? While it is impossible to account for something that has not happened (“prevention”), the Charter’s reactive (“control”) response to the scourge of war has been normatively regulated through the provisions on its international machinery, and functionally developed by the Charter’s followers. Article 55 of the UN Charter formulates the United Nations progressive social justice objective. It laid ground for the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme. 31 This is a core programme as far as criminological input into the UN peacekeeping work is concerned. It is the one mandated to develop and project across the UN system a criminological message involving the anti-war role of “succeeding generations”. In that regard, in 1947 the Programme carried out juvenile justice and trafficking-of-women studies, and in 1950 it produced a statistical report on the impact of the Second World War on crime. 32 In the seventh decade of its existence the Programme conceptually extended the term peace. In line with the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, in 2010 the President of the Security Council stated that transnational organized crime is a global threat to peace and security, 33 and the General Assembly declared the centrality of the criminal justice system for peace and sustainable development. 34 From an analytical review of the normative and functional development of the “United Nations Peace” work, 35 one can learn that when the Programme was established in 1946, it was a normative part of the nascent UN “justice and international law” mandate. Today, this still evolving and diversified mandate 31 Art. 55, United Nations Treaty Collection, Repertory of Practice of United Nations Organs, vol. III, paras. 73 & 74, p. 29, untreaty.un.org/cod/repertory/art55/.../rep_orig_vol3-art55_e.pdf- 32 Redo, op. cit., p. 56. 33 S/PRST/2010/4, Threats to international peace and security, 24 February 2010. 34 GA resolution 65/2010, The Twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, 23 December 2010. 35 Harfensteller, J., The United Nations and Peace. The Evolution of an Organizational Concept , Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Mein, 2011.

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