범죄피해자 보호·지원과 지역적·국제적 협력

Regional and International Cooperation on Protection and Support of Victims of Crime

The number of Koreans living or working overseas has increased dramatically, and the number of overseas Koreans suffering from crimes and other incidents and accidents is also increasing. However, due to the lack of appropriate legal system, the victims of crime abroad are being excluded from the protection and support. In order to solve these problems, it is necessary to establish a system to preserve the damage without questioning when, where and by whom the crime occurred through international and regional cooperation. Established in 1990, the VSE is the first model to establish an international and regional cooperation system for the protection and support of victims of crime based on this awareness. The VSE is comprised of 47 criminal victims’ protection and support groups from 27 countries in Europe, as of 2018, and is responsible for more than 2 million victims of crime per year, regardless of the area of the crime, the nationality of the victim, whether or not the crime is reported. With this, the activities of VOCI, which was launched with the purpose of expanding the protection and support of victims of crime to the regional level and furthermore to the international level instead of staying at one country level, made it possible to increase the human rights of victims of crime and provided an opportunity to reconsider the responsibility of the nation. Korea has been a major contributor to VOCI since its inception and is the vice-chairman of VOCI as of January 2018. Based on these competencies, it is necessary to expand the role of Korea in the field of protecting and supporting victims of crime to the international level in the future. If Korea created the VSA under the leadership of Korea, and it will be possible to carry out activities related to the protection and support of various victims of crime, such as support for the establishment of a crime victim protection law and establishment of a crime victim support center in various Asian countries, of course, it will be a great help to recover the crime damage of not only Koreans overseas but foreigners in Korea. In addition to this, It will be a great help for civil diplomacy as well as raising the nationality of the Republic of Korea.