|
|
From Fides ServiceJune 18, 2010
Trafficking of arms, drugs, human beings, selling of counterfeit
medicines, maritime piracy, illegal burying of poisonous toxic refuse, looting
of natural resources, forests and animals, computer crimes. These are the
principal crimes committed by transnational organizations in Africa according to
a report presented yesterday, 17 June, in New York by UNODC United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime.
Illustrating the report called The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational
Organized Crime Threat Assessment, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of
ONUDC, said “ Transnational crime has become a threat to peace and development,
even to the sovereignty of nations,. Criminals use weapons and violence, but
also money and bribes to buy elections, politicians and power - even the
military ”.
This situation is particularly acute in West Africa, a region used ever more
frequently by Latin American drug traffickers as a transit point towards the
rich markets of Europe. “West African countries need help to increase their
ability to counter transnational organized crime ” says the report. “Recent
efforts against the trafficking of cocaine, with the backing of the
international community, produced promising results. However the region is still
particularly exposed and will continue to face a series of potential threats to
governance and stability”.
Regarding human trafficking, the report says that 55,000 immigrants were
trafficked from Africa into Europe in 2008, bringing 150 million dollars to the
strongboxes of trafficking organizations. “It remains to be seen whether the
financial crisis will reverse this process” says the report. Looted natural
resources in Africa include fauna. Every year between 5,000 and 12,000 African
elephants are killed to feed the ivory market (between 50 and 120 kg per year).
Some organized crime specializes in the selling of counterfeit medicines in Asia
and in Africa. “A good part of certain key drugs tested in south-east Asia and
in Africa failed effectiveness tests and many are evidently swindles. It is
clear that organized crime deliberately swindles consumers in some of the
poorest parts of the world often with lethal results” the report says. This,
according to ONUDC, can have even more serious consequences “watered down
medicines can feed the reproduction of varieties of medicine resistant
pathogenic agents, with global implications”.
Somali piracy produces profits of 100 million dollars a year, a conspicuous sum
on the local level, but very small on the general level. Somali piracy has made
many countries mobilize their navies to protect international shipping along
routes passing the Horn of Africa.
