The Department of Justice’s Office of Cybercrime and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) are currently in talks to partner on various projects on strengthening criminal justice, especially on intensified enforcement of cybercrime laws in the Philippines.

Among the activities that the DOJ and the UNODC intend to undertake is increasing the government’s pool of digital forensic experts and boosting their capacities of cybercrime investigators and prosecutors. This, as DOJ Secretary Jesus Crispin C. Remulla himself highlighted this need due to the steady increase in cybercrimes and cyber-enabled offenses or incidents in the country.

To negotiate on the details of this partnership, Secretary Remulla himself is leading a small delegation of DOJ officials to the UNODC headquarters in Vienna, Austria, to sit down with its Executive Director, Ghada Fathi Waly. The delegation will also visit UNODC’s Crime Laboratory. These meeting and visit will happen on the sidelines of the 68th Session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which the Secretary is also attending along with the Philippine Delegation.

Undersecretary Jesse Hermogenes T. Andres, head of DOJ’s Law Enforcement Cluster and who is leading the conversations with UNODC’s team in the Philippines, also envisions to institutionalize the government’s ability to procure and utilize the necessary digital forensic tools and software applications used in cybercrime investigations. He stressed that funding for the renewal of licenses of these important investigative tools must always be given priority.

DOJ and UNODC are looking at signing a comprehensive Memorandum of Agreement to cover the various justice sector programs, including prison reform and forensics, in May of this year.