Diffusion of the Budapest Convention on cybercrime and the development of cybercrime legislation in Pacific Island countries: ‘Law on the books’ vs ‘law in action’

Abstract

The Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime,11CoE, Convention on Cybercrime - ETS No. 185 (2001). referred to as the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, has been diffused globally, and is serving as a benchmark or a ‘model law’ for drafting national cybercrime legislation in many countries worldwide. This paper argues that, through the mechanism of ‘state socialization’ combined with incentives, e.g. assistance in building law enforcement capacity, the diffusion of the Budapest Convention has had a profound influence on the development of cybercrime legislation in a number of Pacific Island Countries (PICs).22This paper will focus on examining the cybercrime legislation of ten developing South Pacific countries: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.3Michael Minges and Christoph Stork, 'Economic and Social Impact of ICT in the Pacific' (Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility, 2015) <https://www.theprif.org/documents/regional/information-communication-technology-ict/economic-and-social-impact-ict-pacific-0> accessed 19 June 2020. Some PICs have expressed their great interest in acceding to the Convention and ‘imported’ several provisions from the Convention. This article, nevertheless, contends that these PICs do not seem to consider carefully whether the ‘imported’ law is applicable to their existing law enforcement capacity. It is evident that various domestic factors, such as lack of resources, have deterred the enforcement of cybercrime laws in these countries. As the result, although those PICs would have adequate cybercrime laws ‘on the books’, ‘law in action’ is still feeble.