Hanoi: 80th Interpol General Assembly is in progress

Interpol has now 190 member countries, after the delegates of the General Assembly, currently underway in Hanoi, Vietnam, voted to admit Curaçao, Sint Maarten and South Sudan, making them members of the world's largest international police organization.

The General Assembly is Interpol's supreme governing body and is composed of the delegates appointed by each member country. It meets once a year and each country represented has one vote. All votes are equally important.

Leading African musician Yvonne Chaka Chaka got a big cheer at the National Conference Center, the conference venue, for her live performance of "Proud to Be", a song released in support of Interpol's ongoing campaign against counterfeit medicines. The campaign aims to raise awareness of the health risks posed by fake medicines, particularly in Africa, where thousands of people put their lives at risk every year.

The assembly has also discussed a range of issues regarding the use of new technologies to make Interpol National Central Bureaus even more effective in the fight against crime. The NCBs are the point of contact between Interpol global network and the member state. They are set up by each member country and staffed with officers of national police organizations.

The Italian NCB-Interpol is represented by the International Police Cooperation Service (SCIP), established in 2000 within the Criminal Police Central Directorate and headed by the Deputy Director General of Public Security Francesco Cirillo. During the conference Mr Cirillo met the Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Public Security to lay the foundations of a future police cooperation between the two countries, aiming to boost the fight against the most serious forms of organized crime, drug trafficking and trafficking in human beings.

The representative of the Vietnamese Ministry was invited to the celebrations of the next 160th anniversary of the National Police founding, which could be an opportunity for the two countries to enter into a bilateral agreement.

Italian version