2. "including through bilateral or multilateral cooperation"
"Cooperation" is defined as: "the action of cooperating; common effort" and
the "association of persons for common benefit."55
This mandatory obligation to take calculated actions must include "bilateral
or multilateral cooperation." If transnational cooperation were not obligatory, the
provision would not use such strong language. This is a natural consequence of
the ordinary meaning rule of interpretation. For example, the provision could
read "including, where appropriate," or "States Parties should consider
including." Instead, the provision requires States Parties to take measures, and
those measures must include bilateral or multilateral cooperation.
An alternate interpretation could find cooperation is encouraged but not
necessary. Under this interpretation, if the States Parties wanted prevention
obligations to necessarily include transnational efforts, they would have said so
explicitly. Verbiage such as "and must include" or "necessarily including" could
have been used to indicate this intention. However, this interpretation does not
pay due regard to the sentence as a whole.
As the previous discussion concluded, it is plain that the first clause of this
provision creates a mandatory obligation on States Parties to take or strengthen
measures; the question is whether these measures must include transnational
efforts. When faced with this kind of interpretive query, it is important to go
back to first principles. Under the ordinary meaning rule, we are to interpret
words and phrases in a way that gives them a meaning that is standard and
commonplace