Saragossa, 2 November 2006,
Conférence sur « Sécurité, démocratie et villes »

Speech by Ian Micallef, President of the Congress Chamber of local Authorities, on the globalisation of security

Mr Chairman,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is Machiavelli who said that you have to destroy a city to win a war. The times were different then. Today, we have come to realise that the main challenge is to win peace, to make sure that our citizens are safe and secure in the very cities that, if we were in Machiavelli’s times, would have been destroyed.

Security, which is the theme of our discussion today, begins in the cities and villages of Europe. It is in the cities and villages where people invest their lives, and it is in the cities and villages where the local and regional authorities have the prime responsibility for protecting them from crime and acts of violence.

Security begins at home. The question of ensuring security in urban areas has been becoming more and more global. I don’t need to mention the largest evacuation after the Second World War, which just happened before our eyes this past summer during the war in Lebanon, when thousands of French, British, Italian, Russian and other citizens had to be moved to safety, reminding all of us that security of our fellow human beings requires a common effort at all levels –  of international organisations, national governments, parliaments and regional and local authorities.

Violence in our societies today takes many forms – terrorism, ordinary crime, domestic violence, trafficking in human beings, if I were to name just a few. The Council of Europe, which I represent today as President of the Chamber of Local Authorities of the Council of Europe Congress, has been dealing with these issues for many years, and has recently launched a number of campaigns – against intolerance, domestic violence, trafficking, action to protect children. We have also been discussing the possibility of creating a European Centre on urban security, which would be a forum of information-sharing and an exchange of best practices between Council of Europe member states on this matter.

We in the Council of Europe are not new to this issue. In 1992, we adopted the Urban Charter, at the initiative of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, the Charter which sets out a series of principles to guide the action of local authorities in the field of, among other things, urban security and crime prevention in cities – concerning, in particular, urban planning, which would provide for more open and user-friendly street and houses to reduce the crime rate.

The Council of Europe has also had a long-time experience with the issue of terrorism and other forms of violence, which are affecting our cities. Last year, the Council of Europe adopted several conventions in this regard: a revised convention on the suppression of terrorism, convention on the prevention of terrorism, which deals with the recruitment and training for terror, and the convention against the trafficking in human beings, this modern form of slavery which, unfortunately, has a huge market in Europe today.

During the session of our Congress last May, we signed the Declaration on the commitment of local authorities to fight the trafficking in human beings, both in the origin and recipient countries, which is open for signature online on our Congress website and has already been signed by local authorities from a large number of countries both in Europe and across the world, including, for example, Pakistan.

I also would like to make a reference to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, the first in the world on this issue, adopted by the Council of Europe to confront criminal activities in the cyberspace – on Internet – and promote cooperation between security forces in this field. This is the first legal instrument, I should add, with the Additional Protocol to it, which criminalises cyber fraud, hate speech and child pornography on Internet.

All these matters, I am sure, will be part of our discussion today. Urban security, faced with the danger of terrorist attacks, domestic violence, trafficking in human beings – is among the priority issues that local and regional authorities have to deal with, being on the frontline of response. Today, we don’t destroy cities like in Machiavelli’s time. We build them.

Thank you.