Morocco called Monday in Abu Dhabi, during the 15th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice held from September 26 to October 1, for stronger African operational coordination to combat crime, terrorism and separatist movements.
Speaking at a high-level meeting under the theme "Paving the Way to CONNECT’s Operationalization: Strengthening African-Led Operational Coordination against the Nexus between Crime and Terrorism”, Morocco’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office and international organizations in Vienna, Azzeddine Farhane, stressed that the Kingdom, under the enlightened leadership of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, has made South–South cooperation, particularly with our African continent, a fundamental pillar of its foreign policy, particularly the fight against terrorism, separatist movements and organized crime networks in the Sahel and Sahara region.
In this context, he stressed that sustainable security cannot rely solely on security-based approaches, but requires a comprehensive vision that places people at the heart of policies, prevention as the foundation, cooperation as the tool, and trust as the bridge toward joint action.
Farhane said that the challenge lies not only in creating new cooperation mechanisms, but in these mechanisms’ ability to generate trust, action and results, calling for a shift from political commitment to operational trust, from trust to cooperation, and from cooperation to concrete results on the ground.
The diplomat also highlighted the importance of adapting the CONNECT Initiative to national and African contexts, an essential condition for ensuring its sustainability and effectiveness. He called for genuine partnerships based on priorities defined by African countries themselves, as well as international cooperation that responds to the region’s actual needs and strengthens its national and regional capacities.
The Ambassador stressed the need to adopt a comprehensive and integrated approach to combating terrorism and separatist groups in the Sahel and Sahara, taking into account the growing links between terrorist groups, separatist movements and cross-border organized crime networks.
This approach, he continued, requires stronger exchanges of training, exchanges of practitioners, capacity-building and coordination among national, regional and international institutions.
In this regard, Farhane underscored the importance of moving from ad hoc cooperation to institutionalized and sustainable cooperation, and from simple information-sharing to building permanent networks of trust among the various services concerned, enabling them to strengthen their capacity to anticipate, prevent and effectively respond to cross-border threats.
"The success of the West Africa and Sahel Chapter will ultimately depend on our ability to transform political commitment that all of us agree into operational trust, operational trust into cooperation, and cooperation into concrete results on the ground for a safe world," he said.
He added that this would help strengthen security and stability and develop a collective and sustainable African capacity to combat organized crime, terrorism and separatist movements in the Sahel and Sahara region.
This high-level meeting was held as part of the UNODC’s CONNECT Initiative, which aims to strengthen operational coordination and cooperation, particularly in West Africa and the Sahel, in order to combat the links between crime and terrorism.
The meeting focused on ways to move the West Africa and Sahel component of the CONNECT Initiative from the stage of political commitments to implementation on the ground and concrete operational measures, while strengthening African coordination in addressing interconnected and cross-border security threats.
The meeting was attended by the ambassadors of Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ghana and Morocco, as well as the ambassadors of the European Union (EU) and Japan and the Italian ambassador to Vienna, in addition to senior officials from Nigeria and the African Union (AU).
MAP: 29 September 2026
