By Liana Sun Wyler and Pervaze A. Sheikh

Global trade in illegal wildlife is a growing illicit economy, estimated to be worth at least 5 billion and potentially in excess of 20 billion annually. Some of the most lucrative illicit wildlife commodities include tiger parts, caviar, elephant ivory, rhino horn, and exotic birds and reptiles. Demand for illegally obtained wildlife is ubiquitous, and some suspect that illicit demand is growing. International wildlife smuggling may be of interest to Congress as it presents several potential environmental and national security threats to the United States. Threats to the environment include the potential loss of biodiversity, introduction of invasive species into U.S. ecosystems, and transmission of disease through illegal wildlife trade. National security threats include links between wildlife trafficking and organized crime and drug trafficking. The role of Congress in evaluating U.S. policy to combat wildlife trafficking is broad. Potential issues for Congress include 1 determining funding levels for U.S. wildlife trade inspection and investigation 2 evaluating the effectiveness of U.S. foreign aid to combat wildlife trafficking 3 developing ways to encourage private sector involvement in regulating the wildlife trade 4 using trade sanctions to penalize foreign countries with weak enforcement of wildlife laws 5 incorporating wildlife trade provisions into free trade agreements and 6 addressing the domestic and international demand for illegal wildlife through public awareness campaigns and non-governmental organization partnerships. This report focuses on the international trade in terrestrial fauna, largely excluding trade in illegal plants, including timber, and fish.

Washington, DC: U.S. Congressional Research Service,The Library of Congress, 2008. 52p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

In The globalization of crime: a transnational organized crime threat assessment, UNODC analyses a range of key transnational crime threats, including human trafficking, migrant smuggling, the illicit heroin and cocaine trades, cybercrime, maritime piracy and trafficking in environmental resources, firearms and counterfeit goods. The report also examines a number of cases where transnational organized crime and instability amplify each other to create vicious circles in which countries or even subregions may become locked. Thus, the report offers a striking view of the global dimensions of organized crime today.

Vienna: UNODC, 2010. 314p.

By Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Kaoem Telapak (KT)

Indonesia’s legal system is failing to act against timber criminals, seriously undermining the country’s top-level efforts to tackle illegal logging and deforestation. New research by EIA and our Indonesian partner Kaoem Telapak reveals that action through the courts was taken against only a handful of companies out of more than 50 proven to have either traded directly or indirectly in illegal timber.

London; Washington, DC: EIA, Bogor, Indonesia: Kaoem Telapak. 2021. 30p.

By Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).

An undercover investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency has exposed how an entire industry of Italian companies has continued to profit from the sale of valuable timber from Myanmar, even while many other countries have cracked down on the trade and European authorities agree that importing Myanmar timber is a violation of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR). This trade has been allowed to continue since the military coup in Myanmar of February 2021. When asked, no trader confirmed they would stop importing despite the recent introduction of EU sanctions on the Myanmar Timber Enterprise, the state-owned company that claimed to be the only legal source of timber in the country. The investigation raises serious questions about how Italian and European authorities have allowed the trade to continue, and what action they will take to stop it. Only minimal fines have been imposed on the companies, who have continued to trade despite findings they are breaching the law, and the trade has only continued to increase despite heightened scrutiny on the legal problems with Myanmar timber.

London; Washington, DC: EIA, 2021. 34p.

By United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

The present version of the Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit is an initial attempt to provide a comprehensive overview for understanding the main issues related to environmental offences and for analysing preventive and criminal justice responses to wildlife and forest offences in a given country. Efforts have been made to provide a framework through which measures for prevention and response can be analysed and understood as the basis for an effective national response to wildlife and forest offences. The Toolkit is designed mainly to assist government officials in wildlife and forestry administration, Customs and other relevant enforcement agencies. It will help them to conduct a comprehensive analysis of possible means and measures to protect wildlife and forests and monitor their use and thus, to identify technical assistance needs. In this sense, the Toolkit may also be used as training material for law enforcers. In addition, other stakeholders at the international and national levels, as well as civil society, may find the Toolkit useful regarding their daily responsibilities. The Toolkit can be used effectively to address (a) a wide range of wildlife and forest offences, including illegal logging and illegal trade in timber and a lack of adherence to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and, (b) the usefulness of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the United Nations Convention against Corruption.

New York: United Nations, 2012. 212p,

By Yunbo Jiao

The central goal of this study is to produce an in-depth understanding of the nature and dynamics of China-related transnational environmental crime (TEC). To that end, this study takes the GreaterKaoem Telapak Kaoem Telapak China – including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan – as the specific geographic focus for its investigation into three key TEC sectors (illegal trade in wildlife, forest products, and ozone depleting substances (ODS)). Overall, this study seeks to achieve the central goal in a four-step sequence. First, it builds a network-centric conceptual framework based on the idea of “networked threats require networked responses” advocated by many influential scholars. This framework focuses on addressing two puzzles: what essentially constitutes a network threat; and what forms a networked response. Second, it applies the concept of networked threats to the study of China’s global trade in illegal wildlife, forest products, and ODS. Third, it examines China’s TEC-related legal frameworks and enforcement responses and identifies key challenges that China has encountered in each of the three selected TEC sectors. Fourth and finally, it combines the above three lines of understandings – the accounts of networked responses, the empirical findings of China’s illegal trade, and the key regulatory and enforcement challenges identified – to develop practical suggestions on how can China apply the notion of networked responses to the formulation of regulatory and enforcement strategies for addressing the identified key challenges. This study makes two broad arguments: one theoretically oriented and one empirically directed. First, this study argues that while the concept of networked threats can be approached along the dimensions of transaction networks and directed networks, networked responses are not a standard, formatted mode of regulatory or enforcement responses. Instead, networked responses should be understood as a special way of thinking and acting: a way that sees a bright-side actor (e.g., enforcement agencies) as operating in an environment occupied by various networks and entities, which simultaneously present challenges in terms of amplified (networked) threats, as well as opportunities in terms of power amplifiers for the bright-side actor, in the sense that they could potentially be leveraged for tackling these threats. Second, China’s global trade in environmental contraband is typified by the substantial scale of China’s black markets and the deep embeddedness of China in the international and regional illicit trade chains. These two features, on the one hand, pose a serious challenge to the Chinese government in tackling its TEC; while on the other hand, they imply that Chinese effort and progress made toward addressing its illegal internal trade will likely have a substantive, positive overflowing effect on the whole of the international and regional illegal trade.

Canberra: Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, 2016. 306p.

By World Wildlife Fund - UK

Based on trade data for six timber producing regions, this report examines the role of the EU in trade in illegally sourced timber and assesses the potential for the EU to limit illegal logging over the next ten years. Presenting a league table of the EU’s top importers of illegal timber, and combining up-to-date information on both timber imports and EU policy, the report predicts that the main factor limiting illegal logging in the near future will be the exhaustion of forest resources. The implications are far-reaching: biodiversity, human health and national economies across the world will all be affected. The report concludes with a series of recommendations, which address the need for the EU and its member states to take more proactive steps to halt the practice of illegal logging and the trade in illegal timber. It also highlights the urgent need for meaningful co-operation from other major importing countries, including China, Japan and the US.

Godalming, Surrey. UK: WWF-UK, November 2005. 102p.

By EIA

A report on the role of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in curbing illegal timber trade and protecting endangered tree species. Despite the success of its current CITES listing, endangered ramin remains under threat, with the remnants of Malaysia’s ramin forests exploited unsustainably. Although ramin is banned from cutting and export in Indonesia – the only other significant range state – stolen wood continues to be laundered through neighbouring Malaysia in quantities exceeding the global annual legal supply.

London; New York Environmental Investigations Agency, 2011. 17p.

By Rachel Hembery, Anna Jenkins, George White and Beatrix Richards

Illegal logging exists because enormous profits can be made. These profits are most easily realised in countries with endemic corruption, lax law enforcement and poor social conditions, where there is little incentive to change forestry practice. Many of the countries supplying timber and wood products to the UK have high levels of foreign debt, poor governance systems, high levels of poverty and unsustainable forest management, and are experiencing loss of some of the world’s most biodiverse forests at an alarming rate. These factors – which by no means comprise an exhaustive list – contribute to the illegal and unsustainable trade in timber and wood products. Arguably the problems associated with illegal activities are most acute in developing countries, those countries with emerging economies and in the transitional economies of Russia and eastern Europe. These are areas of the world where weak political institutions and weak regulatory enforcement in the forested regions are often the norm, and where corruption is common. This report attempts to estimate the volume of illegal wood entering the UK and to identify which sectors of the UK market utilise this wood and fibre. It identifies various processes involving the UK government as a purchaser or specifier, as well as national and international governmental processes and market-based mechanisms that are in place to counter illegal logging. It identifies their effectiveness and weaknesses and makes a series of recommendations.

Godalming, Surrey. UK: World Wildlife Fund - UK, 2007. 103p.

By Lucia Bird and A. Gomes

The widespread devastation of Guinea-Bissau’s forests – a process coordinated by the military – was curtailed in April 2015 by the imposition of a five-year moratorium on logging exports. Now, the current government looks set to lift the ban – raising widespread concerns of a resurgence in illicit logging.

Drivers for lifting the moratorium may be linked to the powerful interests at play in the sector, both within Guinea-Bissau’s elite and those of the Chinese business community, which have long-standing links to the logging business in the country. These interests, and particularly those of Prime Minister Nuno Gomes Nabiam, were highlighted by a significant seizure of illicit logs by the Judicial Police in November 2020.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2021, 17p.

By Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

Global Forest Watch estimated that between 2001 and 2018, Cambodia had lost 557 000 hectares of tree cover in protected areas, representing an 11.7% loss of the total protected area. Some protected areas have been deforested to such an extent that they no longer have much, if any, natural habitat, and one has been de-gazetted. This loss has impacted biodiversity conservation and has had a detrimental social and economic effect on the indigenous peoples who depend on the forest.

This report explores the ways in which laws, regulations and policies designed to afford protection for Cambodian forests and the local and indigenous people who depend on them are being abused. It also investigates deforestation in Prey Lang and Prey Preah Roka (two wildlife sanctuaries in northern Cambodia, both of which are designated protected areas – see Figure below), where thousands of trees have been illegally harvested and subsequently processed into plywood or luxury timber for export.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2021. 56p.

By Human Rights Watch

This report—based largely on research and interviews conducted with 22 North Koreans detained in detention and interrogation facilities after 2011 (when Kim Jong Un came to power) and eight former North Korean officials who fled the country—provides new information on North Korea’s opaque pretrial detention and investigation system. It describes the criminal investigation process; North Korea’s weak legal and institutional framework; the dependence of law enforcement and the judiciary on the ruling WPK; the apparent presumption of guilt; bribery and corruption; and inhumane conditions and mistreatment of those in detention and interrogation facilities (kuryujang) that often amounts to torture. Because North Korea is a “closed” country, not much is known about the legal processes in its pretrial detention system, but the experiences of those interviewed and the other evidence detailed below, show that torture, humiliation, coerced confessions, hunger, unhygienic conditions, and the necessity of connections and bribes to avoid the worst treatment appear to be fundamental characteristics.

New York: HRW, 2021. 100p.

By Human Rights Watch

On April 7, 2016, soon after the end of evening prayers, Sadia, 27, heard her husband calling her to come down to the street. As she got to the door, however, he stood flanked by two men, blocking the exit. On her husband’s order, his companions doused her with nitric acid. “My husband stood watching as my dress fell straight off and my necklace and earrings melted into my skin,” Sadia said. After four surgeries and almost four months at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, Sadia lost both her left ear and left eye. “He was trying to kill me,” she said when Human Rights Watch met her a year later. Acid attacks are one particularly extreme form of violence in a pattern of widespread gender-based violence targeting women and girls in Bangladesh. In fact, many of the women interviewed for this report endured domestic violence, including beatings and other physical attacks, verbal and emotional abuse, and economic control, for months or even years leading up to an attack with acid. For instance, during the 12 years that Sadia was married before the acid attack, her husband beat her regularly and poured chemicals in her eyes three times, each time temporarily blinding her.

New York: HRW, 2020. 73p.

By Human Rights Watch

Since 2016, over 400 human rights defenders have been killed in Colombia—the highest number of any country in Latin America, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). In November 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) guerrillas reached a landmark peace accord, leading to the demobilization of the country’s then-largest armed group. The agreement included specific initiatives to prevent the killing of human rights defenders. Separately, that year the Attorney General’s Office decided to prioritize investigations into any such killings occurring as of the beginning of 2016.

New York: HRW, 2021. 135p.

By Human Rights Watch

In 2017, a US Border Patrol agent kneed a woman in the lower pelvis, leaving bruises and pain days later, according to her statement to a government official screening her asylum claim. In a separate incident that year, a Border Patrol agent or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer forced a girl to undress and then inappropriately touched her. In 2018, a CBP officer hit another asylum applicant so hard he was knocked unconscious and suffered brain swelling. That same year, an officer wearing a green uniform, consistent with those of the Border Patrol, asked an asylum applicant to give him oral sex in exchange for being released from custody. Another asylum applicant was bitten in the testicle by a Border Patrol service dog and denied medical treatment for about one month and ultimately had to have his testicle surgically removed. In 2019, CBP officials appeared to withhold food from a man in a freezing cold holding facility until he agreed to sign a paper that he did not understand. These are just some of the allegations of abuse catalogued in internal US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports received by Human Rights Watch on September 24, 2021 via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

New York: HRW, 2021. 103p.

By Human Rights Watch

The Cameroon report, “‘Everyone Wants Me Dead’: Killings, Abductions, Torture, and Sexual Violence Against LGBT People by Armed Groups in Iraq,” documents cases of attempted murder of LGBT people by armed groups primarily within the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which are nominally under the prime minister’s authority.

New York: HRW, 2022. 115p.

By Human Rights Watch

In June 2021, Eşref Akoda shot dead his 38-year-old wife Yemen outside her home in the central Anatolian town of Aksaray. Prior to this lethal assault, courts had on four separate occasions issued preventive orders aimed at keeping Eşref away from Yemen after he harassed her when she filed for divorce. A lawyer for the family said that Eşref Akoda had approached and threatened his wife at least twice, violating the third and fourth preventive orders, but that on those occasions the court had not imposed any of the available disciplinary sanctions on him, such as a short period in detention, due to a “lack of evidence”. The prosecutor also declined to bring criminal charges against him, even though Yemen’s lawyer had filed complaints with the prosecutor’s office.

New York: HRW, 2022. 92p.

By Yuliya Mysyuk

This thesis explores perceptions and views of different groups involved in elder abuse. First chapter provides a general introduction to the topic and current study. In the second chapter of this thesis, definitions of elder abuse and their developments are reviewed. Chapter three explores different perspectives on the etiology of violence in later life. Chapter four discusses older persons’ definitions of and explanations for elder abuse. Chapter five explores older victims’ ideas about the causes and effects of abuse, the ways of coping with abuse and how they currently feel about it. In the sixth chapter, the framing of elder abuse as a social and a health problem is addressed, with attention to the factors that influence societal context and the health care system. Chapter seven raises the debate about the distinction of system abuse as a separate form of elder abuse. Finally, key findings of this thesis on perspectives on elder abuse are summarized in chapter eight of this thesis.

Leiden, Netherlands: Leiden University, 2015. 169p.

By Roger Ngoufo; Hubert Tsague D.; Matthias Waltert

In the African rainforest zone, wildlife can provide up to 70 % of animal protein to the population and is used for various cultural reasons (e.g. tastes, food habits, rituals and prestige). Cameroonians have become famous for their attachment to the consumption of game meat. Moreover, the availability of wildlife maintains a variety of public services, forming the basis of substantial numbers of public and informal jobs in the branches of transport and trade. But this natural and cultural heritage is severely threatened by the intensification of illegal activities, including the destruction of habitats and poaching. This book questions the current legal framework of wildlife resources management in Cameroon, asks whether the country’s legislation could be improved towards a sustainable exploitation of wildlife resources and makes concrete suggestions for a possible reform.

Göttingen: University of Gottingen, 2014. 110p.

By Rebecca Wing Yee Wong

The thesis is a study of how Chinese illegal tiger parts trading networks are organized. In particular, this thesis tests in a qualitative manner the causal relationship between three independent variables and the network organizations of these markets. The three independent variables are “ethnicity”, “level of enforcement” and “proximity to the source country”. The thesis also discusses the dynamics of the illegal transactions of tiger parts products. Legitimate meditators or dispute resolutions mechanisms are lacking in the underworld so the risks, which the parties undertake during trading, are far higher. This thesis explores how illegal transactions are enforced, carried out and honored in this trade. In order to map the organization of the tiger trade, I conducted fieldwork in three trading hubs across China: Lhasa. Kunming and Xining.

I discovered five tiger parts trading networks, three of which specialized in the trading of tiger skins and two in tiger bones. Within these networks, the level of perceived but not the actual level of risk influences the decisions of the actors in the network. Entry into the network is easy when the perceived level of enforcement is low. In these settings, there is no ethnic restriction for entering the network; the supplier is willing to trade with anyone with a trustworthy reputation. On the other hand, accessibility to the network is strictly controlled when actors perceive a high level of enforcement in their operating environment. Under this setting, the organization of the network becomes more exclusive and ethnically homogenous, as shown in the Tibetan tiger skin-trading network in Lhasa and the tiger bone-trading network in Kunming. The proximity of the tiger source country to the re-distribution sites (fieldwork cities) also influences the organization of the networks. When the level of enforcement is low and the tiger source country is far away from the re-distribution sites, a monetary deposit is required in order to show that the buyer is serious about his/her request, as shown by the tiger skin-trading network in Kunming.

Oxford, UK: St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford . 2013. 280p.