From Paper to Protection: Realizing the Promise of the Hanoi Convention – Opportunities, Risks, and Multi-Stakeholder Pathways

From Paper to Protection: Realizing the Promise of the Hanoi Convention – Opportunities, Risks, and Multi-Stakeholder Pathways

Room: R202

Time: 13:00 to 14:00, 26 October 2025

Organizer: Embassy of Canada to Vietnam

Side Event Description:
The signing ceremony of the United Nations Convention on Cybercrime in Hanoi represents a milestone in international efforts to address the growing threat of cybercrime. Yet signing is only the beginning. The Convention’s impact will depend on how it is implemented at the national level, across regions, and within complex digital ecosystems. Key questions remain about capability readiness, alignment with human rights standards, and how governments, civil society, the private sector, and academia can collaborate to ensure the Convention is both effective and inclusive.

This proposed side event provides a platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue on how to move from agreement to action. In particular, it will focus on practical implementation challenges and opportunities, especially in tackling transnational scams and fraud, which are among the fastest growing and most damaging forms of cybercrime globally. Insights from GI-TOC’s Global Organized Crime Index signal both the escalation of cybercrime and its integration into transnational illicit economies. This highlights an urgency to translate the Convention’s commitments into coordinated responses.

The panel will explore how the Convention can be translated into a useful tool for operational cooperation. It will surface implementation priorities and promote a shared understanding of the roles that different sectors can play in advancing effective, inclusive, and accountable approaches to combating cybercrime. These sectors include law enforcement, the private sector, academia, and civil society, from which speakers will be drawn from to provide a balanced and representative discussion.  The target audience includes government delegates and law enforcement officials, international and regional organizations, civil society and human rights groups, private sector actors in technology and cybersecurity, and researchers, academics, and policy experts engaged in cybercrime, digital governance, and international law.

Expected Participants: 36-70 people