TC Beirne School of Law student Colin Craig has been offered an internship in Vienna by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for four months from April.
The fifth-year Law/Arts student, majoring in economics and philosophy, will work with the UNODC’s conference support section to help prepare for the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime in October.
“It will involve legal research on aspects of organised crime, helping to prepare background documents and presentations and reviewing legal documents,” Colin said.
“I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to see how the UNODC functions to counteract transnational organised crime and improve global knowledge for developing policies to address these crimes.”
Colin has travelled to Austria twice before, last year on a scholarship to undertake a Diploma of European Studies and the University of Vienna's Sommerhochschule.
“Vienna is an incredible city,” he said. “I’m looking forward to staying longer to become immersed in the culture and improve my language skills.”
Colin has worked with UQ Professor of Criminal Law Andreas Schloenhardt for the past three years, initially as a legal research assistant writing case notes on migrant smuggling prosecutions for the UQ Migrant Smuggling Case Database.
“In 2014 I enrolled in the Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling Working Group as a law elective and wrote a paper on Australia's policy of 'turning back the boats' which was published in the International Journal of Refugee Law,” he said.
“That year I also worked for the UNODC's Regional Office for Southeast Asia researching and drafting a chapter on migrant smuggling in southwest Asia for the Smuggling of Migrants in Asia report, published by the UNODC in 2015.”
Colin received a UQ Summer Research Scholarship to research the prosecution of people smugglers in Australia during the 2014/2015 summer break. This resulted in an article in the Sydney Law Review jointly published with Prof Schloenhardt and a forthcoming article to be published in the Australian Criminal Law Journal.”
This year Colin is also working as a researcher on two different UNODC projects: on migrant-smuggling through and from Pakistan and on human trafficking to Thailand.
