Media room Introduction to INTERPOL

INTERPOL is the largest international police organization in the world. It was set up in 1923 to facilitate cross-border criminal police cooperation and today has 187 member countries spread over five continents. It supports and assists all organizations, authorities and services whose mission is to prevent or combat international crime.

INTERPOL's General Secretariat in Lyon, France, provides a fast and reliable communication system that links police around the globe. Its priority activities concern public safety and terrorism, criminal organizations, drug-related crimes, financial and high-tech crime, trafficking in human beings, and fugitive investigation support. But INTERPOL's staff, many of them police officers seconded to Lyon from police forces around the world, also provide a range of crucial services in other areas of criminal investigation and crime prevention.

One of INTERPOL's most important tasks is to place member countries on alert about people who are being sought by police forces worldwide but it is a member country's domestic police who request that they be placed on the INTERPOL wanted list and it is domestic police who, for the most part, must track and arrest them.

INTERPOL is the sum of its constituent parts, but the General Secretariat in Lyon is the essential co-ordinating mechanism that gives its members access to international databases of criminal information as well as a global view on specific crimes, patterns and trends.