This document, created by the Ibero-American Association of Public Prosecutors (AIAMP) and the European Union’s COPOLAD Program, outlines certain guidelines, principles, and tools that can be used by prosecutors in the region to address, from a legal and investigative perspective, criminal phenomena that intersect with illicit drug trafficking and environmental crimes (or administrative offenses, where applicable).
These guidelines are divided into three main categories: legislative reforms, investigative work, and prosecution work.
The first category explores possible legislative reforms that countries could consider in relevant forums and spaces, insofar as they would promote more effective and reparative actions in the field of criminal justice (both for human victims and for the environment).
The second category proposes guidelines for action during the investigative stage, from the design of strategies to the implementation of intrusive procedures such as searches and arrests of suspects, and the various international cooperation actions that need to be promoted.
The last set of guidelines focuses on the criminal prosecution stage, i.e., the indictment and trial. Here, legal issues such as the possibility of applying alternative outcomes and objections that may arise due to violation of ne bis in idem will take on greater relevance.
Taken as a whole, this set of good practices and guidelines is aimed at strengthening the criminal process. This will make investigative and prosecutorial activities more effective, encompassing the criminal phenomenon as a whole, with all its facets and those responsible for it, within a framework of full respect for human rights and care for the environment and the communities and ecological components that inhabit it.
In this way, prosecutors in Ibero-America will be contributing to fulfilling the mandate recently formulated by the International Court of Justice, which consists of preventing significant damage to the climate system and other components of the environment. In this way, prosecutors in Ibero-America will be contributing to fulfilling the mandate recently formulated by the International Court of Justice, which is to prevent significant damage to the climate system and other components of the environment.
