Delphine Schantz. — Photo courtesy of the United Nations

HÀ NỘI — Regional Representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Delphine Schantz, recommended that countries should treat the UN Convention against Cybercrime (Hanoi Convention) as a ‘starting point,’ instead of an ‘end goal.’ She made the recommendation during an interview with the Vietnam News Agency’s correspondent.

Việt Nam has become the first country in Southeast Asia and the third globally to ratify the Hanoi Convention. In your view, what does this milestone signal about Việt Nam’s evolving role in international cooperation against cybercrime?

Việt Nam was the first country in Southeast Asia - and only the third in the world - to ratify the UN Convention against Cybercrime. Ratifying such an instrument involves a review of its national legal framework, coordination among relevant governmental entities and strong political commitment. Việt Nam’s efforts in a short period of time since the signing of the Convention last October in Hà Nội, should be commended. It set the standard for the Southeast Asian region.

This milestone sets a benchmark for the Southeast Asian region, which is grappling with serious and growing cybercrime challenges. These include large-scale online scams, criminal compounds that have trapped thousands of victims, sexual exploitation, and abuse of children online, violence against women online, and money laundering through cryptocurrencies. Addressing these threats demands a shared legal, judicial, and operational response – one in which Việt Nam will play an active role.

For UNODC, this achievement reflects a partnership built over many years of collaboration with Vietnamese authorities on preventing and responding to violence against women and children, investigating cybercrime, handling digital evidence, and advancing legal reform.

How do you assess the coordination among key international organisations such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), INTERPOL, and UNODC in ensuring the Convention is translated into practical and effective action?

The three organisations have different mandates and when they partner with each other, the results are more impactful. INTERPOL works at the operational level connecting police forces, sharing intelligence, and coordinating investigations across borders in real time. The Inter-Parliamentary Union works with lawmakers, helping them understand what changes their national laws require to comply with the Convention's requirements. UNODC focuses on legal, institutional, and capacity building response: helping countries strengthen their legal systems, train regulators, law enforcement, and prosecutors.

This coordination works well in several areas such as joint awareness raising campaigns, training programmes, knowledge sharing between legislators and law enforcement, and developing common frameworks for tracking progress. Having legislation in place is not enough if not adequately and effectively implemented.

It will take all three organisations, and more, working together to make digital spaces safer everywhere in the world.

From UNODC’s regional vantage point, how would you assess the current level of readiness among Southeast Asian countries to ratify and implement the Hanoi Convention?

Across Southeast Asia, countries are at different stages in their responses to cybercrime. Some already have adopted robust cybercrime laws, established experienced investigation units, and developed bilateral agreements with other countries to share evidence, forfeit digital assets, and cooperate on cases. Those countries will move toward ratification and implementation relatively quickly. Others are still building those foundations and might need more time and support.

It should be acknowledged however that there is a strong political commitment across the region, as demonstrated in recent ASEAN ministerial declarations. Cybercrime – especially the large-scale scam operations that continue to cause significant harm to people and economies across Southeast Asia – has become a priority concern for governments at the highest level.

There is a consensus throughout the region to effectively address the problem in all its dimensions, and the Convention offers the adequate framework to respond to that aspiration.

While the political is present, the bigger challenge for most countries remains technical and practical: building systems to identify, deter and protect as well making cross-border cooperation effective. Those are exactly the areas UNODC focuses on, and where investment over the coming years will matter most.

What are the most common challenges UNODC has observed so far in translating the Convention’s provisions into national legal frameworks and operational practices?

The challenges we see most often come down to a few recurring areas.

First, drafting new laws highly technical can be a complex process. Translating the Convention requirements into each country's existing legal and judicial structure takes real expertise. The way legal terms are defined can create problems when cases get to court or possibly impede mutual legal assistance.

Second, many countries are updating their cybercrime laws and privacy laws simultaneously, and these two areas often pull in different directions. Law enforcement authorities need access to digital evidence to investigate crimes, while individuals have a right to privacy. Striking the right balance in legislation - and securing parliamentary approval – is genuinely difficult, with no single solution that works for every country.

Third, laws must effectively protect people from the risks of cybercrime. At the same time, it is essential to ensure that individuals, particularly women and children, are not prosecuted for unintentional acts if the law does not clearly provide for them.

Finally, no response to cybercrime will be effective without well-trained officers. Investigators who understand digital evidence, prosecutors who can build cybercrime cases and use international judicial cooperation, judges who have sufficient knowledge of the offences. Laws can be updated faster than skills can be built, and that gap is one of the most common limiting factors we see across the region.

From UNODC’s perspective, what concrete recommendations would you offer to ensure the Hanoi Convention moves beyond commitment on paper to effective implementation in practice across member states?

The most important recommendation is to treat implementation as a long-term commitment, not a single event. Ratifying the Convention is meaningful, but the real work comes after. Countries that set out clear plans, setting out the responsibilities and allocating the related resources, consistently do better than those that treat ratification as the end goal rather than the starting point.

Second, commit to sustained and continuous capacity building for investigators, prosecutors, and judges. Criminal methods evolve rapidly, and the skills of those tasked with combating them must keep pace. This requires ongoing investment of effort and resources.

Third, build the cooperation channels, not just the laws, which mean enhancing both domestic coordination and international cooperation. The Convention creates the legal basis for countries to work together - sharing evidence, extraditing suspects, running joint investigations. But those platforms of cooperation need to be actively built and maintained. The region has existing frameworks and bodies through which this cooperation can happen, and UNODC encourages member states to make full use of them.

Finally, engage the private sector as a genuine partner through public-private partnerships. Technology companies and telecommunications providers hold much of the digital evidence that investigations depend on. Building clear, fair and transparent cooperation frameworks with those companies, rather than treating them only as entities to be regulated, strengthens the entire system. The countries that have invested in these relationships have noticeably more effective anti-cybercrime responses as a result. — VNA/VNS