View/save PDF version of this document - La Strada International

524 Travaux préparatoires: United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime“(a) To ensure that travel or identity documents issued by them are of suchquality that they cannot be easily misused and cannot readily be unlawfully altered,replicated, falsified 2 or issued; 3 and“(b) To ensure the integrity and security of travel or identity documents issuedby or on behalf of the States Parties and to prevent their unlawful creation, issuanceand use. 4 ”Notes by the Secretariat2. The revised text of the article formulated by the informal drafting group (see footnote4 below) was discussed at the informal consultations held during the ninth session ofthe Ad Hoc Committee, which recommended that it should be adopted.3. At its eleventh session, the Ad Hoc Committee considered, finalized and approvedarticle 12, as amended. The last amendments are reflected in the final text of the protocol,as included in the report of the Ad Hoc Committee (A/55/383, sect. IV, draft resolution,annex III), that was submitted to the General Assembly for adoption pursuant toresolution 54/126 of 17 December 1999.B. Approved text adopted by the General Assembly(see resolution 55/25, annex III)Article 12Security and control of documentsEach State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary, within availablemeans:(a) To ensure that travel or identity documents issued by it are of suchquality that they cannot easily be misused and cannot readily be falsified or unlawfullyaltered, replicated or issued; and(b) To ensure the integrity and security of travel or identity documentsissued by or on behalf of the State Party and to prevent their unlawful creation,issuance and use.2Proposal by Saudi Arabia at the sixth session of the Ad Hoc Committee.3At the sixth session of the Ad Hoc Committee, a number of delegations expressed concern about the cost implicationsof this provision for developing countries and some delegations proposed making its application discretionary or conditionalon available means. Other delegations expressed concern that the reference to “misuse” might be viewed as anattempt to create an obligation to criminalize misuse, which should be dealt with in article 4. As a result, the words “inaccordance with available means” were added and the phrase “otherwise misused” was revised and moved to clarify thatthe provision would call upon States only to prevent misuse by employing high-quality documents. Three delegations continuedto seek the deletion of the reference to “misuse”. One delegation also sought to replace the words “shall adopt” withthe words “are encouraged to adopt”.4The revisions to former paragraph 2 of article 12, now subparagraph (b), resulted from the work of an informal draftinggroup during the sixth session of the Ad Hoc Committee. The new text was not considered prior to adjournment andstill required agreement. A number of delegations had expressed concern about the uncertainty of the previous text and theunderlying policy objectives. It emerged that the provision was seen not only as a control on materials and blank or unissueddocuments, but also as a more general control on the issuance process. Some delegations also expressed concernabout the possible cost implications of this provision and asked that a reference to “in accordance with available means”should be included. There was general agreement that the underlying objective was to ensure that, once a high standard forthe quality of documents was set by subparagraph (a), the more sophisticated documents did not fall into the hands of smugglersat any stage of the production or issuance process. The Chairperson noted that subparagraph (a) dealt with the qualityof documents and called upon delegations to form an informal drafting group to develop a revised text based on threenew topics: the security of documents in production and before issuance; the security or integrity of the issuance processitself; and the validation or verification of documents after they had been issued. It was noted that the text of this provisionwas parallel to the text of article 9 of the draft trafficking in persons protocol, as that text was reorganized at the sixthsession. During deliberations on that text, the Ad Hoc Committee had decided to incorporate these same changes for purposesof further discussion.