Consider the following statements: I. The United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) has a ‘Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air’. II. The UNCAC is the ever-first legally binding global anti-corruption instrument. III. A highlight of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) is the inclusion of a specific chapter aimed at returning assets to their rightful owners from whom they had been taken illicitly. IV. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is mandated by its member States to assist in the implementation of both UNCAC and UNTOC. Which of the statements given above are correct?

The answer is C (2 and 4 only). Statement II is true: UNCAC, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2003 and in force from 2005, is the first legally binding global anti-corruption instrument. Statement IV is true: UNODC serves as the secretariat and technical arm for both UNCAC and UNTOC.

• Statement I is false. The Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air belongs to UNTOC (Palermo, 2000), not UNCAC. UNTOC has three protocols: trafficking in persons, migrant smuggling, and firearms.
• Statement III is false. The chapter on returning illicitly acquired assets is Chapter V of UNCAC, on asset recovery. UNTOC has no such chapter.

The core concept is the distinction between the two conventions: corruption-specific obligations sit in UNCAC, while organised crime and its protocols sit in UNTOC. For Mains (GS-2 and GS-3), this links to international cooperation against black money and illicit financial flows.

Trap: Aspirants often attach the famous migrant-smuggling protocol to UNCAC because it is the better-known UN convention, or assume UNTOC carries the asset-recovery chapter.