VICTORIA, Seychelles — Vice-President Sebastien Pillay on Wednesday asked the National Assembly to authorise Seychelles’ accession to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, framing the 2001 Council of Europe treaty as the most practical route to round-the-clock cooperation on cross-border cases and electronic evidence. The motion follows the unanimous approval in December 2025 of the Cybercrime and Other Related Crimes (Amendment) Act 2025, which aligned the country’s primary cybercrime statute with the treaty’s substantive and procedural standards.
Pillay, who is also the Minister for Information, Communications Technology, told lawmakers that the convention’s 48 articles, spread across four chapters, give Seychellois investigators and prosecutors the tools to act on offences ranging from illegal access and data interception to computer-related forgery, fraud and the production or distribution of child sexual abuse material. He stressed the treaty’s chapter on international cooperation, including its 24-hour network contact point under Article 35, which lets one signatory reach a counterpart within and outside normal working hours when an urgent cyber case crosses borders. “The convention was opened for signature in Budapest on 23 November 2001, entered into force on 1 July 2004 and remains the only internationally recognised treaty focused exclusively on cybercrime and electronic evidence,” he said, according to the live broadcast of the National Assembly sitting on 22 July 2026.
Seychelles first flagged its interest in joining in October 2024, when Cabinet approved the necessary steps and asked the Council of Europe to invite the country to accede, a decision confirmed in the Cabinet Business release of 10 October 2024. The invitation was extended on 18 June 2025 under Article 37 of the convention and remains valid for five years, a window confirmed by the civil society tracker CADE. With the National Assembly’s backing this week, the executive is expected to lodge the instrument of accession in Strasbourg in the coming weeks, completing the second stage of the two-step process.
The motion comes against a backdrop of rapid growth in cybercrime legislation across Africa. As of May 2026, 82 states are parties to the convention, including 13 non-European countries that have ratified since 2022, among them Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Ghana, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and Sierra Leone, a trajectory tracked in regional coverage of Kenya’s parallel accession move. A parallel United Nations Convention against Cybercrime, also known as the Hanoi Convention, was opened for signature in October 2025 and has since attracted 76 signatories but only three ratifications, according to a Eurojust factsheet. African states have largely converged on the older Strasbourg instrument as the operational benchmark for cross-border investigative cooperation.
Pillay, who presented the original Cybercrime and Other Related Crimes (Amendment) Bill 2025 in November 2025 and signed the explanatory statement as Vice-President, told the Assembly that the amendments and the proposed accession together “keep us on the right track in preparation for acceding to the convention.” The 2025 amendment act cleared three readings and won unanimous approval on 15 December 2025, the same approval pathway that paved the way for this week’s motion and that is documented in the WeAreTech coverage of the original 2024 Cabinet decision.
Honourable Bernard Georges, the Member of the National Assembly who has long advocated for the move and sits on the executive committee of Parliamentarians for Global Action, welcomed the step. “By being part of the Budapest Convention, it will give us access to higher levels of international cooperation, which will put us as a country on par, in line with international standards,” Georges said in a separate statement reported by the Parliamentarians for Global Action and earlier parliamentary briefings. The framework also gives Seychellois authorities a direct line to foreign 24/7 contact points and a route to mutual legal assistance on intercepted traffic data, expedited preservation of stored computer data and the cross-border production of electronic evidence, with African data-protection authorities watching the accessions closely.
The government will now deposit its instrument of accession with the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. The convention will enter into force for Seychelles on the first day of the third month following the deposit, in line with Article 37 of the treaty. Once the country becomes a party, it will gain full observer and then participant status in the Cybercrime Convention Committee, the standing body that tracks implementation, and will be eligible for additional technical support under ongoing Council of Europe capacity-building projects.
Sources cited: 1. National Assembly of Seychelles, Sitting of Wednesday 22 July 2026 (Part 1), broadcast 22 July 2026, . 2. State House of Seychelles, “Cabinet Business – Thursday 10th October 2024”, 10 October 2024, . 3. CADE — Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment, “Seychelles invited to join Budapest Convention on Cybercrime”, 30 July 2025, . 4. Dawan Africa, “Kenya moves closer to joining global cybercrime treaty after public review”, 17 June 2026, . 5. Eurojust, “United Nations Convention against Cybercrime (Sirius) factsheet”, published 2025, . 6. WeAreTech Africa, “Seychelles eyes Budapest Convention to strengthen cyber defence”, 11 October 2024, . 7. Parliamentarians for Global Action, “Seychelles Requests Invitation to Accede to Budapest Convention”, 11 October 2024, . 8. DataGuidance, “Cabinet approves accession to Budapest Convention on Cybercrime (Kenya)”, 12 February 2026, .
