In 1998, the United Nations established an Ad Hoc Committee to address trafficking in persons; illegal trafficking in and transporting of migrants; and illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms, their parts and components, and ammunition. The new convention can be divided into four main areas: criminalization, international cooperation, technical cooperation, and implementation. Regarding criminalization, the convention established four offenses: participation in an organized criminal group; money laundering; corruption; and obstruction of justice. In the area of international cooperation, the convention included articles on extradition, mutual legal assistance, transfer of proceedings, and law enforcement cooperation. The Convention included two articles on technical cooperation. The first intended to cover cooperation to develop specific training programs; the other to deal with technical assistance in the more traditional sense of the term. On implementation, the convention will establish a Conference of the Parties, which will have the dual task of improving the capacity of states parties to combat transnational organized crime and to promote and review the implementation of the convention. An innovative feature of the new convention is an article on prevention designed to introduce formally the concept of prevention and include some of the results of the latest research in this field. The three protocols were against trafficking in persons, especially women and children; against the smuggling of migrants by land, air, and sea; and against the illicit manufacturing of or trafficking in firearms. 10 footnotes