By Fernando Forattini

This brief brief article intends to to demonstrate some of the problems with the main theories on corruption and introduce the reader to the new field of Anthropology of Corruption, a type of of research that tries to understand one of the most pressing issues nowadays through a nonbinary point of view, but trying to to understand the root of of corruption, and its its multifaceted characteristic, especially through its cultural aspect; and why it is, contemporarily, the most it is, the most effective political-economic political-economic discourse discourse – - most most at at the the times used in a populistic fashion, at the the expense of of democratic institutions. Therefore, we we will will briefly analyze the three main theoretical strands on corruption and point at some of its faults; then indicate to the reader what are the main goals Anthropology of Corruption, and what questions it seeks to answer; of and, and, finally, the the political impact that corruption discourses have on society, and its perils when on its instrumentalized in populistic discourses.

Academia Letters, Article 2245.. 2024

Edited by: Melissa Demian

The introduction of village courts in Papua New Guinea in 1975 was an ambitious experiment in providing semi-formal legal access to the country’s overwhelmingly rural population. Nearly 50 years later, the enthusiastic adoption of these courts has had a number of ramifications, some of them unanticipated. Arguably, the village courts have developed and are working exactly as they were supposed to do, adapted by local communities to modes and styles consistent with their own dispute management sensibilities. But with little in the way of state oversight or support, most village courts have become, of necessity, nearly autonomous.

Village courts have also become the blueprint for other modes of dispute management. They overlap with other sources of authority, so the line between what does and does not constitute a ‘court’ is now indistinct in many parts of the country. Rather than casting this issue as a problem for legal development, the contributors to Grassroots Law in Papua New Guinea ask how, under conditions of state withdrawal, people seek to retain an understanding of law that holds out some promise of either keeping the attention of the state or reproducing the state’s authority.

Canberra: ANU Press, 2023. 210p.

By Michael McLaggan

Prominent throughout the world, illicit financial flows (IFFs) not only undermine the ability of states to collect revenue, but they also pose challenges to governance and the rule of law and provide avenues for the funding of further illicit activity. Although a global occurrence, IFFs may manifest differently at the regional level, making a uniform approach difficult. This calls for a model that is more inclusive of different types of flows than traditional understandings of IFFs, which tend to focus on financial flows within the formal system. In regions such as East and southern Africa, where informality is much higher than in the developed nations of the ‘global north’, the greater focus on formal systems does not find the same degree of applicability. This is not to downplay the necessity of observing and countering formal financial flows of an illicit nature but rather to emphasise the need to pay greater attention to informal and trade flows, which are prolific in less developed regions. This paper draws on extensive research by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) – in particular, the Observatory of Illicit Economies in East and Southern Africa – in addition to research by other international organisations, to analyse whether the ‘IFFs pyramid’ proposed by the GI-TOC (Reitano, 2022) is applicable to and useful for researchers seeking to understanding illicit financial flows in various settings around the world but especially in regions where greater levels of informality exists, such as East and southern Africa. The paper finds that the pervasive informality of markets in the East and southern African region, and their abuse by criminal actors, means that greater attention to IFFs is necessary in this sphere. Common also is the use of illicitly acquired, or otherwise illicitly traded commodities, in barter (that is, goods for goods) markets. Identified as particularly relevant is the pernicious influence of state-embedded actors, who often play substantial roles in the facilitation of IFFs and act as obstacles to policies to address them. Furthermore, vested interests of criminal actors in keeping certain industries and markets informal serve as barriers to formalisation and highlight the greater need to pay attention to informal financial flows especially. The due consideration to trade and informal flows is what makes the IFFs pyramid a useful model for understanding these flows in both global and regional settings. At the very least, the pyramid model highlights the need for holistic approaches and policy reform when considering IFFs in less developed regions.  

Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham. 2024, 33pg

By Thomas G. Blomberg, Jennifer E. Copp, and Jillian J. Turanovic

The relevance of criminology to matters of public policy has been hotly debated throughout the history of the discipline. Yet time and again, we have borne witness to the consequences of harmful criminal justice practices that do little to reduce crime or improve the lives of our most vulnerable populations. Given the urgent need for evidence-informed responses to the problems that face our society, we argue here that criminologists can and should have a voice in the process. Accordingly, this review describes challenges and prospects for evidence-informed policymaking on matters of crime and justice. In terms of challenges, we review discourse on what constitutes evidence, issues with providing guidance under conditions of causal uncertainty, and practical constraints on evidence-informed policymaking. For prospects, we consider the important roles of institutional support, graduate training, and multiple translational strategies for the evidence-informed movement. Finally, we end with several considerations for advancing translational criminology through expanded promotion and tenure criteria, curricula revision, and prioritizing the organization of knowledge. More broadly, our goals are to stimulate disciplinary thinking regarding the ways in which criminology may play a more meaningful role in effectively confronting the ongoing challenges of crime in society.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 143 - 162

By: Manuel Lomas Cortés and Consuelo Lopez-Morillas

"The study of galleys is no longer confined to the history of events, navigation, or tactics. The classic paradigm has gradually been transformed: essentially descriptive- of types of ships and their components, or of the number and composition of their crews- it also served nationalist ends. The affirmation of an epic, glorious past could legitimate a nation's identity and its role in building the political, legal, and cultural reality of the modern-day Mediterranean"

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2020

Edited by Nick Gill and Anthony Good

Drawing on new research material from ten European countries, Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives brings together a range of detailed accounts of the legal and bureaucratic processes by which asylum claims are decided. The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the diverse actors involved, the means by which they communicate, and the ways in which they make life-and-death decisions on a daily basis. It offers a contextually rich account that moves beyond doctrinal law to uncover the gaps and variances between formal policy and legislation, and law as actually practiced. The contributors employ a variety of disciplinary perspectives – sociological, anthropological, geographical, and linguistic – but are united in their use of an ethnographic methodological approach. Through this lens, the book captures the confusion, improvisation, inconsistency, complexity, and emotional turmoil inherent to the process of claiming asylum in Europe.

Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 346p.

By Mark Galeotti

Time of Troubles is the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of the Ukraine war on the Russian underworld. The war’s human and economic costs, along with the political retrenchment of a regime under growing pressure, are all transforming illegal markets and organized crime in Russia with potentially destabilizing effects. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent undeclared conflict in the Donbas region had already begun to reshape the Russian underworld. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, brought dramatic changes. An almost complete split between Ukrainian and Russian criminal groups has had a significant negative impact, not least because of their dominance over transnational narcotics flows. At the same time, new opportunities to smuggle sanctioned luxury goods for the rich and critical components for the defence–industrial complex have enriched and elevated other gangs, especially those able to exploit and control routes through Belarus, Armenia and Central Asia. All this is putting pressure on the underworld status quo – and the state’s capacity to manage and maintain it – and even reshaping the relationship between Russian criminal networks and their partners and subsidiaries abroad. Even when the war does end, some form of sanctions or trade and investment controls will almost certainly remain in place. The Kremlin will find it difficult to integrate large numbers of traumatized, impoverished and disillusioned veterans, many of whom risk drifting into organized and disorganized crime. Condemned to pariah status and looking for alternative ways to support itself, the state may turn its existing ad hoc relations with the underworld into something much more focused and institutionalized, creating new dangers for its neighbours and the global order as a whole. The stakes could hardly be higher.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2023. 72p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

Since 2007, negotiations with violent organised crime groups (hereafter, “criminal groups”) have been increasingly featured in government, church and NGO responses to violent criminality in Latin America and the Caribbean. They are enormously controversial, both politically and ethically. Many consider them unacceptable and counterproductive, as they may involve risks such as legitimising the criminal group or emboldening others to engage in criminal activities. The relative rarity with which such negotiations produce a deal and the great uncertainty as to their long-term outcomes are further sources of controversy. The sensitivity and risks are so large that some who have participated in the situations examined in this paper are wary of calling them “negotiations.” They may avoid the term even when they have bargained from a position of superiority or succeeded in striking a deal. In attempting to address the challenges criminal groups present, most countries understandably employ a tough-on-crime stance. Any other would be hard to justify to the public. Yet, where the activities of these groups have become especially pervasive and violent, there is often a lack of deterrence capacity, leading to public anger and desperation. Negotiation can thus sometimes become an option and may be pursued in conjunction with coercive tactics, institutional strengthening, legalisation measures and more. As a diplomat involved in the talks with criminal gangs in El Salvador and Honduras put it, by negotiating “we were not trying to get to heaven; we were just trying to avoid hell.” But if negotiation with criminal groups sometimes becomes necessary, which group characteristics and contextual factors must be taken into account? What end-goals are appropriate and realistic? What inducements, concessions and redlines must be contemplated? And how do such processes compare and contrast with negotiations conducted with politically-motivated insurgents? These are just some of the questions examined in this paper.   

Barcelona, Spain: The Institute for Integrated Transitions, 2021. 47p,

By Bodean Hedwards,, Lucia Bird, and Perkha Traxl 

This report analyzes recent trends in maritime people smuggling from South and South East Asia on journeys towards Asia-Pacific, focusing on four case study countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Sri Lanka. These were chosen to provide a cross-section of source, transit and destination countries in the region, with Sri Lanka and Indonesia being well-established departure countries toward Oceania. The paper considers key trends, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and intersections with human trafficking. It is important to note that maritime migration does not occur in isolation but typically forms part of what is usually a longer migration journey that involves land border crossings as well as air routes. This report examines trends in the smuggling of migrants across maritime pathways in South and South East Asia, with a particular focus on journeys towards the Asia-Pacific region. The paper provides insight into the conditions that compel migrants to choose people smuggling – and particularly maritime smuggling – as a means of migration and details the reasons that influence migrants’ decisions in relation to destination and migration routes. It explores the factors that make irregular migrants vulnerable to trafficking during their journey and examines the nature of maritime people-smuggling models and operations around the region, looking at, among other factors, recruitment, payment, and border crossing and immigration arrangements. Finally, drawing on what is known about people-smuggling dynamics and experiences across South and South East Asia, the report explores emerging responses identified during interviews that are thought to be having an impact on the various intersections of people smuggling and human trafficking.

Geneva, SWIT:  Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime., 2023. 60p.  

By Summer Walker

What happens in America often reverberates globally. The complex global emergency of COVID-19 has now met waves of uprising around anti-racism, inequality and the systems that perpetuate them. Many policing tactics deployed in communities around the world derive from policy responses to curb illicit markets. Some of the most persistent and militarized responses in communities are predicated upon fighting transnational organized crime. And these often occur in communities of colour, immigrant neighbourhoods, and marginalized and lower-income areas. These current debates about power, use of force and inequality provide a lens to examine responses to transnational organized crime. This brief uses the concept of illicit markets to examine organized crime as the systems and actors that make up these markets, including the government responses to them. Transnational illicit markets, such as the illicit drug or wildlife trade, connect a wide range of actors – from farmers and fishermen to hitmen and cartel bosses. Organized criminal groups, the most common manifestation of how organized crime is carried out, include cartels, armed militias and gangs. But they can also include members of political parties, corporations, businesses and local governments. By looking at the markets more broadly and then identifying where responses are targeted, one can see how transnational organized-crime responses create their own logic of power and exclusion, and are deployed to manage communities. This policy brief begins by discussing the current US context of BLM protests, then situates the debate within the transnational organized-crime agenda, and addresses the implications for responses that align with calls for social and economic justice.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.2020. 21p.

By Gemma Dipoppa

The widespread presence of criminal organizations in strong states presents a theoretical and empirical puzzle. How do criminal organizations — widely believed to thrive in weak states — expand to states with strong capacity? I argue that criminal groups expand where they can strike agreements with local actors for the provision of illegal resources they control, and that this practice is particularly profitable in strong states where costs from prosecution are higher. Using a novel measure of organized crime presence, I show that (1) increases in demand for unskilled labor — and in criminals’ capacity to fill it by exploiting migrants — allowed southern Italian mafias to expand to the north, and that (2) mafia expansion gave a persistent electoral advantage to political parties collaborating with them. This suggests the need to reconceptualize criminal organizations not only as substitutes for weak states but as complements to strong states.

Preprint, 2021. 59p.

By Ata Hoodashtian

This study about Corruption Corruption is is not not based on on a a specific specific juridical juridical or or economic economic approach. Corruption can also be be considered as as a a moral moral and and philosophical philosophical issue. The emphasise here is is given to to a a political and philosophical approach with a focus on the last and the most important a on evolutions of Western Societies: the decline of the State and the decline of values. of the State and the decline of values.

Writers and scholars, whom I used as references for this paper, have been studying each of these I as of evolutions for for the the last 20 20 years in in the the West. Globalization is is an an important fact related to to these problems. But how and why? Sociologists and philosophers have been focusing on these issues to study the social and political crisis. To understand what corruption is, is, we we will need to understand to the the function and nature of of the the structural crisis of of Western societies at at the the level of Institutions and of and values. But, how would corruption be related to these facts? These are the questions developed in this paper.

By Institute For Economics & Peace

From the document: "The Ecological Threat Report (ETR) is a comprehensive, data-driven analysis covering 3,594 sub-national areas across 221 countries and territories. It covers 99.99 per cent of the world's population and assesses threats relating to food insecurity, water risk, demographic pressures, and natural disasters. This report identifies countries that have the highest risk, both now and in the future, of suffering from major disasters due to the ecological threats they face, the lack of societal resilience, and other factors. These countries are also the most likely to suffer from conflict. The 2023 ETR aims to provide an impartial, data-driven foundation for the debate about ecological threats facing countries and sub-national areas and to inform the design of resilience-building policies and contingency plans."

Institute For Economics & Peace . 2023. 77p.

By David Lewis

Despite Ukraine's ongoing counter-offensive, in September 2023 Russia still controlled around 17% of Ukrainian territory, an area roughly the size of Denmark. Russia's occupation of these Ukrainian territories relied primarily on repression and violence, but economic levers also played an important role in consolidating Russian rule. This paper details Russia's illicit economic activity in the occupied territories and calls for more international attention to this aspect of Russia's invasion.

Since Russia occupied large parts of south-eastern Ukraine in March 2022, it has worked rapidly to incorporate these regions into Russia's economic and financial system. Key elements in this 'economic occupation' include:

• The seizure of many Ukrainian businesses and assets. The occupation authorities 'nationalised' many companies and reregistered them as Russian businesses with new management.

• The imposition of the Russian currency, financial and tax system, and the forced closure of Ukrainian banks.

• The forcible takeover of farms or pressure on farmers to cooperate with the occupation authorities. Russian officials oversaw the illegal export of Ukrainian grain from the occupied territories.

The reconstruction of cities such as Mariupol, the city destroyed by Russian forces in spring 2022, in a multi-billion-dollar government programme that is profiting well-connected Russian companies.

These acts were all illegal under Ukrainian law and some may constitute potential war crimes under international law.

Research Paper 20. Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham, 2023. 43p.

By Jirka Taylor, Shann Corbett, Fook Nederveen, Stijn Hoorens, Hana Ross, Emma Disley

The illicit tobacco trade is a global phenomenon with significant negative health, social and economic consequences. This study is intended to support efforts to better understand the scope and scale of the illicit tobacco market. The primary objective was to develop a reliable, robust, replicable and independent methodology to measure the illicit market that can be applied by the EU and its Member States. The key requirements were that the methodology would capture the total volume of the illicit trade and distinguish between the legal and illegal market, ideally distinguishing between types of tobacco products, and types of illicit trade. Based on in-depth literature reviews and interviews with key informants, we constructed a longlist of 11 methodologies that have been or could be used to measure the illicit tobacco market and assessed them against a standardised set of criteria. This resulted in a shortlist of five preferred methods (i.e. discarded pack survey, comparison of sales/tax paid and self-reported consumption, consumer survey with and without pack inspection/surrender, econometric modelling). As individual approaches, these shortlisted methods were not sufficient to meet the minimum criteria. Accordingly, these shortlisted methods were then used to formulate options for combination of methodologies corresponding to various levels of resource intensity.

Brussels: Publications Office of the European Union, 2021. 197p.

By Summer Walker

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) researches the political economy of organized crime in many countries, including those on the United Nations Security Council’s agenda. The GI-TOC also analyzes how the Security Council responds to illicit economies and organized crime through its agenda, including through an annual review of resolutions that tracks references to organized crime. We use the term ‘illicit economies’ here to include the markets and actors involved. This series, UN Security Council Illicit Economies Watch, draws on research produced by the GI-TOC regional observatories and the Global Organized Crime Index to provide insights into the impacts of illicit economies for Council-relevant countries through periodic country reports. As the United Nations develops its New Agenda for Peace, there is a need to consider the impacts of illicit economies in the search for sustainable peace and preventing conflict. The UN Secretary-General called for a New Agenda for Peace in his report Our Common Agenda, saying that to protect peace, ‘we need a peace continuum based on a better understanding of the underlying drivers and systems of influence that are sustaining conflict, a renewed effort to agree on more effective collective security responses and a meaningful set of steps to manage emerging risks’.1 One of these key underlying drivers is illicit economies and a more effective response will need to account for this. The Security Council will play a critical role in any renewed effort. This brief provides an overview of how the Council addresses illicit economies and offers ideas for advancing the agenda. It first examines how specific crimes are addressed by the Council, expands into a wider analysis of the dynamics of illicit economies and conflict, and offers thinking around how illicit economies can be considered in the context of the New Agenda for Peace.

UN Security Counci. 2023, 22p.

By Matt Herbert | Rupert Horsely | Emadeddin Badi

Libya has been a key focus of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) since the country’s 2011 revolution. A June 2023 UNSC meeting on Libya focused on the country’s political process, the need to hold elections and support work around the reunification of security and defence forces.1 That same month, the Council re-authorized its arms embargo on the country2 and in late 2023 it is set to renew the UN mission in Libya. The UNSC has sought to advance an effective political process, reunify the country’s divided institutions and address threats to peace and security, and human rights abuses. To effect this change, the UNSC authorized and draws on the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), a sanctions committee and linked Panel of Experts, and the European Union Naval Force Mediterranean Operations Sophia and IRINI.3 Despite these efforts, Libya remains a highly fragile country. Although large-scale violence has ebbed since the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF)’s loss in the 2019–2020 war for Tripoli, the country remains divided. The Government of National Unity (GNU) – the internationally recognized government in Tripoli led by Abd al-Hamid Dabaiba – exerts direct influence over limited areas of the country’s territory, mainly in Tripolitania. Most territory, including Cyrenaica and the Fezzan, is held by the LAAF, led by Khalifa Haftar. Attempts to bridge these divides, hold elections and forge a broadly legitimate government have repeatedly failed, most recently in December 2021.4 Nonetheless, UNSC efforts in this regard continue, reflecting an international consensus that the way out of Libya’s protracted instability is likely to be found in the political track, through the establishment of a government capable of superseding the current divides and exercising sovereign control over the country.5 However, the distribution of power within Libya challenges efforts to stabilize the country through the political track alone. Belying the simple narrative of national bifurcation, the GNU and LAAF have limited and contingent control over their respective areas. Instead, armed groups rooted in municipal or tribal groupings dominate local power. Governance and security often hinge on deals and agreements continually being renegotiated between these groups and the GNU or the LAAF.

Libya’s thriving illicit economies, and their links to armed groups and political actors throughout the country, compound the challenges to the UNSC’s efforts to promote a stable peace and the rule of law.6 Profits from these markets provide a crucial funding source for armed groups, enabling and incentivizing pushback against state efforts to assert control, and drive conflicts between groups over control of key markets and routes.7 They also fuel petty and large-scale corruption, stymying efforts to rebuild rule of law and security-force effectiveness in the country.8 Efforts to prevent criminal penetration of the Libyan state have failed. Actors linked to illicit economies have increasingly become embedded within the security forces, while others seek opportunities for high-level positions and political influence. This raises the risk that criminal interests, predation and corruption will be fused into the state. Equally problematically, it risks poisoning citizen trust in and possible acceptance of future governance and security structures involving compromised actors. For these reasons, understanding how illicit economies function in Libya and their impacts, and how they are changing, is essential for the UNSC as it seeks to promote political solutions and stability in the country. This brief provides the UN and member states with a snapshot of how Libya’s illicit economies have developed over the last three years and the impact those shifts have had. In the interest of length, the brief does not detail all changes or offer a full description of the structural elements in all markets. Rather, it focuses on the most salient aspects for policymakers assessing the challenge of illicit markets. The brief begins by detailing the impact illicit economies have on armed groups and political dynamics. Next, it assesses the state of play of the main illicit markets in the country: fuel smuggling, drug trafficking, mercenaries, arms and ammunition smuggling, and migrant smuggling and trafficking. It ends with a brief set of recommendations.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime , 2023. 35p.

Genevieve Kotarska and Lauren Young

This paper explores the environmental and human security risks associated with critical mineral extraction, how rising demand for critical minerals in the context of the net zero transition will impact these risks, and what options exist for the UK to address these risks.

Critical minerals are broadly defined as minerals that are of vital importance for technology, the economy and national security and are also subject to serious risks relating to the security of their supply. This paper uses the term ‘critical minerals’ broadly, focusing on minerals considered to be of high criticality to the UK in particular. It recognises that this is not a fixed list, and that a country’s specific assessment will affect whether a mineral is considered critical.

A dramatically increased supply of these minerals will be vital for the net zero transition – both in the UK and internationally – and to meet the target to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, set at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Conference in 2015.

Yet the extraction of critical minerals poses various environmental and human security risks, many of which pose a threat to the net zero transition, in the UK and globally. This paper explores the environmental and human security risks associated with critical mineral extraction, how rising demand for critical minerals in the context of the net zero transition will impact these risks, and what options exist for the UK to address these risks. It identifies key environmental risks as including the potential for critical mineral extraction to contribute to deforestation, pollution, soil degradation, water scarcity and biodiversity loss. In relation to human security, key risks identified include the potential for critical mineral extraction to contribute to human rights abuses, labour exploitation, crime, conflict and corruption. Where mining takes place on or near Indigenous lands, both environmental and human security risks are found to disproportionately affect already-disenfranchised communities.

While a number of these risks are well established, there is a potential for burgeoning demand for critical minerals to accelerate potential harms. Such harms can occur in situations where rising demand pushes governments to remove or overlook relevant regulations; where new extractive operations open up in countries without mining histories, which lack the infrastructure or capacity to manage the associated risks; where harmful boom–bust cycles of extractive activity occur due to ongoing technological advances; and where a race to secure supplies of critical minerals exacerbates competition and geopolitical tensions.

If the mining sector fails to address these risks as demand booms, public opinion across source and supply countries might turn against the net zero transition as the harms are perceived to outweigh the benefits. It is crucial that the UK leverages its unique position as an international trade, financial and mining hub to help the international community mitigate the risks posed in this regard.

Based on the findings of this research, the authors suggest the following ways forward for consideration by the UK government, many of which are also applicable to other governments in the Global North:

• Use its role as a mining and financial hub to improve regulation, standards and transparency in relation to investment in critical minerals based on key environmental priorities, for example, through the application of the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures, Science-Based Targets for Nature, Global Reporting Initiative and other similar initiatives, thereby supporting integration of high-quality targeted frameworks into this burgeoning sub-sector. This will reward and enhance uptake of best practice by businesses and support regulation in producer countries globally.

• Develop an updated industrial strategy on critical mineral use specifically, to support the strategic acquisition and use of critical minerals and facilitate prioritisation across key industries should a shortage of critical minerals occur. This should be used alongside the UK’s Critical Minerals Strategy to ensure that critical minerals are used strategically, particularly in the face of fluctuations in supply.

• Given the criticality of the net zero transition and the minerals it requires, review domestic policies to maximise recovery of critical minerals that are already in consumer supply chains, in the form of waste. This would broaden opportunities for critical mineral sourcing aside from extraction via new mines. This should include prioritising the upscaling of the UK’s recycling capacity to facilitate the reuse of critical minerals, mindful of the fact that while recycling alone cannot meet demand for critical minerals, estimates suggest that recycling could meet 10% of global demand, while bringing jobs to the UK in support of the ‘levelling up’ agenda.

• Work with manufacturers on extended producer responsibility, right to repair and design-to-recycle best practice to move towards a circular economy and ensure that critical minerals are reused and recycled wherever possible, thereby reducing demand. This will help to reduce wastage of critical minerals and decrease pressure on supply chains.

• Support improved consumer requirements for standards around the production of critical minerals. An example of this can be seen in the case of the 2023 EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products, which could be adapted for the critical mineral sector in the UK and more widely across the Global North.

• Support governments in source countries to develop the infrastructure and capability to manage mining-related risks. This could involve providing development assistance to build capacity to apply regulation and best practice, while supporting initiatives that mainstream biodiversity, conservation and social justice into regulation. Such regulation should improve the development and practice of the mining sector in producer countries, in collaboration with other actors working in this area, such as relevant aid agencies and multilateral development banks.

• Consider how to integrate innovative concepts and proposals that call for a paradigm shift in our approach to economic activity, human wellbeing and the natural world. This can be achieved through an approach which prioritises the pursuit of human and ecological wellbeing over material growth, and has the potential to help us better assess, understand and mitigate the environmental and social harms associated with the mining sector and other sectors dependent on natural resources

London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies -RUSI, 2023. 49p.

by Julia Stanyard

The development of transport infrastructure boosts trade and stimulates economic growth. However, this infrastructure can also benefit criminal networks, which use air transport to traffic illicit goods such as drugs, wildlife and gold. Their activities are disguised from regulatory bodies, and many act in collusion with corrupt officials. However, this can be countered by implementing effective oversight measures. This is crucial considering the substantial expansion of African air traffic in recent years, forecasts that Africa will continue to be one of the fastest-growing regions in the world for aviation, and the challenges that the aviation sector globally is facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

ENACT Africa, 2023. 18p.

By INTERPOL and ENACT Africa

Across the globe, the proliferation of new armed groups (including rebels, militias, criminal groups and gangs) has made conflict prevention and resolution even more complex . Armed groups are diversifying their revenues, which are increasingly based on organized crime activities . Organized Crime Groups (OCGs) often benefit from the turmoil of armed conflicts and violence. They can engage in violence to protect their illicit business, undermining national economic development and security. Furthermore, OCGs can team up with armed groups to access and control natural resources, competing with the state to provide public goods or even protection to their community. Different situations of violent conflict affect countries in the Eastern African region. Crime dynamics that emerge from instability in one country of the region can spill over into a neighbouring country, posing a threat to regional peace and security. The emergence of hybrid criminal groups engaged in transnational organized crime and in armed conflict most likely represents a relevant dimension of contemporary conflict in Eastern Africa. Yet, the knowledge on the multiple ways in which OCGs prey, or even amplify, local conflicts for their own benefit remains limited. In many instances, the scale of criminal activities in Eastern Africa contributes to an increase in the risk of conflict or in its prolongation. Organized crime thrives in conflict and other situations of violence in the region when goods and supplies are scarce, filling the demand often in association with armed groups. In some cases, revenue from criminal activities enables armed groups to finance their activities. The illicit circulation of weapons in the region from and into conflict-affected settings fuels violence and criminal activities. Information suggests that in some occasions, armed groups and OCGs collude to smuggle goods, migrants and drugs through the region and beyond. Moreover, the illicit extraction, control and taxation of natural resources in the region is often a source of revenue for armed groups and often links them with criminal actors. Information shows that livestock theft, or cattle rustling, poses a serious threat to many countries in the region and fuels the increase in the demand for small arms and light weapons in two aspects: for fighters to steal cattle and for ranchers to protect their livestock against such attacks. Higher levels of violence have been reported in cattle rustling cases affecting local economies and security. Organized violence for profit continues to affect Eastern Africa. Kidnapping for ransom, looting, threats and sexual gender-based violence are among the most reported incidents in the region. The driving factors for those crimes are sometimes difficult to discern and involve a combination of reasons such as economic gain, firearms sourcing (notably for cases of looting security forces), intention to control a community or territory. Illicit financial flows, and particularly, illicit taxation, allow OCGs and armed groups to generate revenue through commodity taxes, by imposing taxes on the community to move through certain areas or to run their business

Lyon, France: INTERPOL, 2021. 32p