RHIPTO

Cartels, non-state armed groups including rebels and terrorist groups and regular organized criminals are benefitting from environmental crime. Faciltated by Assistant Secretary-General Ibrahim Thiaw, Ms. Roraima Andriani of INTERPOL highlighted the increasing converging of heavy transnational organized crime on natural resources. Edgar Gutierrez-Espelata, UNEA president and minister of Environment, Costa Rica, warned against the rising involvement of the drug cartels in illegal logging in Latin America. Minister Vidar Helgesen, Norway, pointed out the rising threat of environmenal crime to peace and security, the need to strengthen efforts and to take further the lead of Norway in responding to UN Security Council S/res 2195 highlighting the nexus of organized crime and non-state armed groups, including terrorism,  in peace and security. Amina Mohamed, Foreign minister of Kenya, emphasized the threat against development. UN Environment and INTERPOL hosted the high-level side event on the role of environmental crime in peace, development and security and signed a new agreement of collaboration. RHIPTO staff assisted in facilitating the side-event and the preliminary report.

New joint report by RHIPTO and the Global Initiative Against Organised Crime reveals that harder traffickers benefit and effectively circumvent silver bullet “wall”-border policies, putting migrants and refugees at higher risk to human rights abuses. Failure to address the full smuggling chain can cause rise in and benefit hard core traffickers associated with non-state armed groups on the borders to North America and Europe. This results in push-back of moderate smugglers and promote traffickers, cartels and non-state armed groups, such as known from war on drugs.

An estimated 45.8 million people live in modern slavery. The International Labour Organization estimates that global profits from forced labour surpass US$150 billion per annum, suggesting that slavery, forced labour and human trafficking are more profitable than the global arms trade. Today, non-state armed groups like Da’esh/Islamic State and Boko Haram actively promote slavery both as a means to finance themselves and as a method of war.

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With the UN Security Council about to receive a report from the Secretary-General on Trafficking in Persons in Conflict, there is a unique opening for action on this issue. RHIPTO contributed to this new report, Fighting Human Trafficking in Conflict: 10 Ideas for Action by the United Nations Security Council, reviews the tools available to the UN Security Council and member states and suggests 10 ideas for action, providing concrete steps for the UN Security Council and its partners to take to sever the link between conflict and slavery.

SPRINGFIELD, Va. —The Presidential Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking (co-chaired by the Department of State, Department of Interior, and Department of Justice) in cooperation with the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency hosted the Presidential Task Force on Wildlife Trafficking Symposium Tuesday, June 28 at NGA's Springfield, Va. campus. 

The conference was opened by NGA Director Robert Cardillo, and keynote remarks from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mr. Dan Ashe. RHIPTO attended the closed meeting and will support the taskforce with information and analysis on converging threats including a wider range of trafficking and relations to non-state armed groups.

The UNEP-INTERPOL Rapid Response assesssment led by RHIPTO Rapid Response warns that non-state armed groups across the planet are shifting to environmental crimes as a new source of revenue. The nexus of organized crime and threat finance on the rise. Environmental crimes are rising annually by 5-7% or 2-3 times the rate of the global economy The report is receiving worldwide media attention. 

RHIPTO supported this UN report with contents and graphics , reflecting a scientific analysis of wildlife crime. The report focusses on publicly available data and highlights the need to improve efforts to combat wildlife trafficking. The report provides a summary of literature and essentially depict the large gap between criminal intelligence and official statistics or research available. Both enforcement and criminal intelligence efforts are lacking behind - but also scientific research and monitoring need strengthening.

Environmental impacts responsible for almost one quarter of all deaths, highlighting need to place environment at heart of efforts to improve human health

Danger posed by air pollution, chemicals, microplastics, zoonotic diseases and other environmental threats to human health revealed in series of reports released at second United Nations Environment Assembly. RHIPTO staff co-edited report for UNEP.

The UN Security Council adopted the recommendation from  the UNEP-MONUSCO-OSESG report on the underpinnings of the conflict in DRC, which was led by a RHIPTO-UNEP-MONUSCO-O/SESG team in 2015. The recognition for the first time that the conflict is driven mainly by organized crime, not a political insurgency, is historic. The largest UN peacekeeping operation, including over 20,000 troops and a Force intervention brigade, will strengthen its information and analysis capacity to address the looting of natural resources.

Some of the findings from the report were presented by Head of MONUSCO and Special representative of the Secretary General Mr. Martin Kobler in the United Nations Security Council on 19 March this year. On 26 March 2015, the Security Council passed resolution S/RES/2211 renewing for 12 months the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC.  The UN Security Council furthermore authorized MONUSCO to carry out targeted offensive operations, either unilaterally or jointly, with the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC). Significantly, this enables the Mission to use the necessary force to prevent criminal armed groups from benefitting from any exploitation of natural resources, and hence, address the root causes of the conflict.

International Business Times featured a RHIPTO Trans-Sahara smuggling map and the role of terrorist groups including  AQIM and Al Mourabitoun in taxing or transporting cocaine, cannabis and cigarettes from Guinea-Bissau and Nigeria to Morocco, Libya and Algier, passing through Mauritania and Mali.

A UNEP-MONUSCO-OSESG report, led by RHIPTO staff and supported by a large group of independent experts and MONUSCO, concludes that criminal networks are taking 98% of the profits - estimated at 722-862 million USD annually from gold, minerals, timber, charcoal and even wildlife in the conflict zones in eastern DRC. The criminal  networks fund some 8,000 fighters from 25-49 rebel groups to destabilise the region and subsequently enable the looting to continue. As the criminal networks have become transnational, efforts to control the smuggling especially of gold may cause spill-over of unrest to neighbouring countries, including Burundi.

The UN General Assembly adopted resolution 76/185 "Preventing and combating crimes that affect the environment" on 16th December 2021 (7 pages). The report sets out 19 requests and urges members states including to reinforce and strengthen the capacities, training and specialization of relevant law enforcement and judicial authorities for effectively preventing, detecting, investigating, prosecuting and punishing crimes that affect the environment. The report references four major RHIPTO reports out of nine in total, including collaborative reports with INTERPOL and the UN, as the underlying documentation on the serious threats to the environment from transnational organized crime.