The 14th edition of the Octopus Conference 2023 has concluded in Bucharest (Romania). An increasing number of countries are acceding to the Budapest Convention of the Council of Europe. There are now 69 state parties from around the world, with Brazil, Nigeria and Cameroon the most recent to join, with a further 23 states that are committed to doing so and a record number of more than 130 countries that have so far aligned their legislation with its provisions.
A special session focused on ten years of capacity building by the Cybercrime Programme Office of the Council of Europe (C-PROC) was addressed by Council of Europe Deputy Secretary General, Bjørn Berge and State Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Romania, Traian Hristea.
On the closing day of the conference the Deputy Secretary General, Bjørn Berge, emphasised that “Cybercrime affects the core values and institutions of our democratic societies: from election interference to attacks against critical infrastructure. We need to keep up, or even be ahead of the curve as new technology is developing at an astonishing speed. All of you together – present here today – are central to achieving that”.
The three-day event (from 13 to 15 December) was one of the biggest platforms of exchange in this field and gathered more than 500 cybercrime experts from 100 countries, drawn from international organisations, private sector and academia. They discussed legislation, information sharing and various forms of online exploitation and abuse with a focus on securing and sharing electronic evidence and lessons learned from 10 years of the Cybercrime Programme Office of the Council of Europe (C-PROC).
While the Convention on Cybercrime comprises a limited list of criminal offences, its effectiveness is enhanced through synergies with treaties such as the Lanzarote Convention on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, the Istanbul Convention on Violence against Women and Domestic Violence or the Convention on Trafficking in Human Beings of the Council of Europe. Crime prevention, protection of victims/witnesses, and action against cyberviolence are further areas for joint responses.
In the margins of the conference, the Deputy Secretary General also held bilateral meetings with the Honourable Minister Mircea Abrudean, Head of the Secretariat General of the Romanian Government; James Kimuyu, Director for Cybercrime at the Ministry of the Interior of Kenya; Senator Constantin-Bogdan Matei, Chairperson of the Commission for Youth and Sports of the Romanian Senate; and Traian Hristea, State Secretary of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Romania. The Octopus Conference is part of the Octopus Project, currently funded by voluntary contributions from Canada, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, UK and USA.
