The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has launched a new global campaign to raise awareness that transnational organized crime carries an annual cost of US$870 billion.

With the campaign slogan “Transnational Organized Crime: Let’s put them out of business,” UNODC wants people to realize that transnational organized crime has financial and social costs.

According to UNODC, drug trafficking is the most profitable form of organized crime, with an annual profit of US$320 billion. Counterfeiting comes in second, with an annual profit of US$250 billion, and the value of human trafficking is about US$32 billion per year. The estimated annual profit of migrant smuggling is close to US$7 billion.

In addition to costing the global economy billions, organized crime is also a “threat to peace, human security and prosperity,” the campaign will preach.

" Stopping this transnational threat represents one of the international community's greatest global challenges" UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov said this week.

The campaign highlights the loss of countless human lives to violence tied to drug use and trafficking, human trafficking and smuggling, and arms trade. There are an estimated 2.4 million trafficking victims at any one time, UNODC estimates.

http://www.reportingproject.net/occrp/index.php/en/ccwatch/cc-watch-briefs/1593-united-nations-organized-crime-worth-us870-billion-annually