By Team of Analysts at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC)’s Observatory

In 2023, Tunisia emerged as the primary country of embarkation for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe, eclipsing Libya, which had long been the main North African departure point. In total, some 97 306 migrants arrived in Italy from Tunisia, just over three times as many as in 2022. Tunisia’s new status as North Africa’s leading embarkation hub followed four years of constant growth in irregular migration and human smuggling. In previous years, the increase in departures had primarily involved Tunisian nationals. In 2023, however, the surge in irregular migration was largely driven by foreigners, mostly from West Africa and Sudan. While some of these migrants were long-term residents in Tunisia, the spike was fuelled by a notable and rapid rise in the arrival of sub-Saharans across the border with Algeria and, to a lesser extent, the border with Libya. The high demand for departures led to a more complex smuggling ecosystem in Tunisia, with networks offering increased and diversified services. There were also key shifts in the way foreign migrants, in particular, embarked, with a growing number forgoing engagement with smugglers and turning instead to self-smuggling. However, as in previous years, it was the worsening of the country’s complex political, social and economic problems that spurred clandestine departures and licit migration. While some aspects of the multidimensional crisis facing Tunisia improved, overall the challenges remained acute, with severe drought, uncertain financing conditions and the slow pace of reforms hampering economic recovery, while failures of governance continued to affect the delivery of public services such as water, education and health care. Moreover, a dramatic shift in Tunisia’s approach to irregular migration led to a deterioration in conditions for migrants and an acceleration in the pace of foreign migrants leaving the country. In February, President Kais Saied denounced undocumented sub-Saharan migration to Tunisia, triggering a series of events that resulted in foreign migrants being evicted from their homes, dismissed from their jobs, and threatened with arrest and violence. This growing climate of fear in turn influenced and hastened the departure of undocumented migrants from the country. In response to rising migration, the Tunisian government instituted tighter security controls, with occasional escalations in response to spikes in departures. Enforcement in maritime areas and along the land borders with Libya and Algeria intensified in the second half of the year. In addition, the Tunisian government increasingly resorted to the forced transfer of migrants – mainly to and across the borders with Libya and Algeria – in order to manage tensions among the local population and curb departures. According to public reports documenting the testimonies of deported migrants, a notable element of these forced transfers was the level of violence and abuse inflicted by the Tunisian security forces. The exceptional growth in irregular migration from and through Tunisia in 2023 marked a rapid escalation of trends observed since 2020. Given the enduring influence of the factors driving irregular movement from Tunisia and other key countries of origin, interest in departures to Europe is expected to persist further into 2024. However, volumes will be influenced by a number of variables, including the effectiveness of security forces in managing increased migratory pressures and the adaptability of smuggling networks to evolving enforcement tactics. This is the latest Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) monitoring report on human smuggling in Tunisia. It builds on the series of annual reports that has been issued since 2021, tracking the evolution of human smuggling in Tunisia, as well as the political, security and economic dynamics that influence it.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2024. 41p.

By John Dunham & Associates

The Buy Safe America Coalition represents a diverse group of responsible retailers, consumer groups, manufacturers, intellectual property advocates and law enforcement officials who support efforts at all levels of government to protect consumers and communities from the sale of counterfeit and stolen goods. One important issue facing US businesses is the massive growth in the availability and sales of illicit products, both from counterfeit imports — increasingly from China — and from products stolen from legitimate retailers and sold through online marketplaces, where the anonymity of a screenname has made it easier and more profitable to fence counterfeit and stolen goods. The Coalition asked John Dunham & Associates (JDA) to examine the data around these illicit sales to determine how they impact the US economy, federal tax revenues, and criminal activity. This is the first of a series of papers examining the issue of counterfeit and stolen goods and its effect on the United States economy. This analysis will focus on the importation of illicit products, notably counterfeits that violate producers’ intellectual property rights. Future analysis will examine the effects of domestic smuggling, the resale of stolen goods, and the effects of contraband on overall criminal activity. According to the analysis: • A large share of contraband items are delivered to US consumers by mail or by express consignment. These transactions account for over 60.8 percent of all seizures by the US customs service and over 90 percent of intellectual property rights (IPR) seizures. The growth in these types of shipments has increased along with the use of online marketplaces. Amazon, for instance, now derives more than 75 percent of their ecommerce revenue from marketplace sales. • In effect, as companies like the Chinese ecommerce marketplace Alibaba and the Amazon marketplace, have linked more consumers to more shippers, many companies producing illegitimate products have gained access to unwitting consumers in America. • The bulk of counterfeit products to the US come from China and its dependent territories, accounting for over 90.6 percent of all cargo with IPR violations. Of the $1.23 billion in total IPR violations intercepted, $1.12 billion was from China. • Examining just those data where CBP can provide an HS code, in some cases, the amount of contraband cargo is nearly equal to the entire import base. For example, imports of certain sweaters, jumpsuits and toys from China are almost 100 percent contraband, as are large amounts of handbags, jewelry and belts. • While there is substantial academic literature on the smuggling of narcotics, people and tobacco, there is very little written on counterfeit products. Using a very conservative model it is estimated that $44.3 billion in additional illicit cargo is escaping detection. • These lost sales alone mean that over 39,860 jobs in wholesaling and nearly 283,400 retail jobs are lost due to the impact of counterfeit goods skirting normal trade channels. All told, the sale of counterfeit items is expected to cost the wholesale and retail sectors of the US economy nearly 653,450 full-time equivalent jobs that pay over $33.6 billion in wages and benefits to US workers. • It is estimated that the smuggling of counterfeit goods costs the US government nearly $7.2 billion in personal and business tax revenues alone. • This analysis is based on the current level of CBP intercepts of illicit cargo. It is likely that the number of illegal imports is much larger than even estimated here.  

Washington, DC: Buy Safe America Coalition, 2021. 25p.

By Max Gallien and Florian Weigand

Although  smuggling is  commonly  assumed to happen  in remote and difficult-to-access borderlands, in reality, smuggling is most prevalent in areas that states tightly control, including formal border crossings. To understand this puzzle, this article explores the relationship between states and smugglers at international borders. Based on extensive empirical research in various borderlands in North Africa and Southeast Asia, it argues that different kinds of smugglers prefer different types of relationships with the state. The article outlines six ideal types of such relationships. It contends that these types of relationships are the dominant factor in how different smuggling networks choose routes along a border. The findings have implications for our understanding of smuggling and policies that aim at addressing smuggling, especially regarding the effects of border fortifications and corruption prevention. bordFor over 400 kilometers, the border between Tunisia and Libya stretches across deserts, lakes, and mountains. The border provides a source of income for one of the largest smuggling economies in North Africa, with trading in everything from gasoline, fabrics, and electronics to cigarettes and narcotics. Its length and terrain make the border difficult to control for both Tunisian and Libyan security forces, and offer plenty of opportunities for the thousands of smugglers who cross the border everyday to stay undetected or leverage their superior knowledge of the terrain in high-speed car chases with soldiers and customs officers. And yet, most of these smugglers have chosen two particular points in the border to conduct their business: the formal border crossings as Ras Jedir and Dhiba. In fact, differ-ent smuggling networks prefer different routes: while those trading in mobile phones, bananas, or alcohol have typically preferred to play cat and Mouse.

SECURITY STUDIES, 2021, VOL. 30, NO. 1, 79–106

By Diana Kim andYuhki Tajima

This article analyzes the efficacy of border enforcement against smuggling. We argue that walls, fences, patrols, and other efforts to secure porous borders can reduce smuggling, but only in the absence of collusion between smugglers and state agents at official border crossings. When such corruption occurs, border enforcement merely diverts smuggling flows without reducing their overall volume. We also identify the conditions under which corruption occurs and characterize border enforcement as a sorting mechanism that allows high-skilled smugglers to forge alternative border-crossing routes while deterring low-skilled smugglers or driving them to bribe local border agents. Combining a formal model and an archival case study of opium smuggling in Southeast Asia, we demonstrate that border enforcement has conditional effects on the routes and volumes of smuggling, depending on the nature of interactions between smugglers and border agents. By drawing attention to the technological and organizational aspects of smuggling, this article brings scholarship on criminal governance into the study of international relations, and contributes to debates on the effects of border enforcement and border politics more generally.

International Organization , Volume 76 , Issue 4 , Fall 2022 , pp. 830 - 867

By Saša Đorđević

Fuel smuggling is the illegal transport, sale or purchase of petroleum products such as crude oil, petrol, diesel and other refined petroleum products. It has been a persistent illicit trade in the Balkans for over three decades.

In 2022, police and customs of the seven Balkan countries seized more than 3 000 tonnes of illegal fuel, with a retail value of €4.3 million – almost four times more than the value of fuel seized in all of 2021. Fuels are goods subject to high excise and customs duties that smugglers try to avoid paying. Alternatively, smugglers seek to profit by evading embargoes on oil imports and exports. From this perspective, the Balkan countries’ public funds lost at least €1.2 million in 2022 as a result of fuel smuggling.

However, relying solely on seizure data to evaluate the illicit fuel market may lead to misleading conclusions because of law enforcement’s inherent challenge in substantiating the unlawful provenance of fuel. This discrepancy becomes more apparent when considering the estimated scale of the issue. In Bulgaria alone, for example, the projected value of illegal fuel in 2019 reached approximately €0.5 billion, resulting in significant budget losses of €250 million.

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Libyan electoral crisis, both of which involved major oil-producing countries, the UN extended measures to combat illicit petroleum exports from Libya in July 2022. The EU also imposed bans on Russian oil in December 2022 and again in February 2023, as part of its response to the war in Ukraine. At the same time, the Balkans became the focus for licit and illicit fuel manoeuvres.This report analyzes the mechanisms of fuel smuggling during times of crisis and instability in the Balkans, considering both internal and external factors that contribute to the overall landscape. It identifies lessons learned from fuel smuggling in the early 1990s and then moves to explain the evolution of this activity with reference to trafficking methods, actors and routes through to 2022. The report also identifies countries in the Balkans at particular risk from fuel smuggling, as well as hotspots that allow illicit trade, particularly on rivers and seas. The report, furthermore, assesses the typical profile of criminal actors active in fuel smuggling. The research is limited to cross-border fuel smuggling operations rather than illegal distribution within a specific country.

Geneva, SWIT: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. 2023. 34p.

By Max Gallien

This project explores the political economy of informal and illegal cross-border trade in North Africa, focusing in particular on Tunisia’s border with Libya, and Morocco’s North-East bordering Algeria and the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Based on extensive fieldwork, the project traces the informal institutions that regulate smuggling across the region, examines the resulting rent streams, and analyses their relationship to the region’s states through a political settlement framework. Following shifts in the domestic politics of Tunisia and Morocco as well as the regional border infrastructure, the project also traces the recent re-negotiation of the role of smuggling in the region. It argues that contrary to common assumptions, smuggling rarely occurs 'under the radar' of the state, but is instead embedded in a tight network of institutional regulation in which the regions' states play a key role. Furthermore, rather than subverting states, smuggling activities are a central feature of the region’s political settlements. The project highlights that the ability of different groups to navigate and negotiate the terms of their inclusion into these settlements is highly uneven, posing serious challenges for borderland populations.

London: The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2020. 333p.

By Euromonitor International

Alcoholic beverages are deeply ingrained in most societies worldwide, with global consumption in 2017 generating US$1.6 trillion in legally registered sales of 222.8 million hectolitres of pure alcohol (“hectolitres of alcohol equivalent”, or hl lae). However, despite the efforts of policy-makers, law enforcement officials, and legitimate alcohol manufacturers, illicit alcoholic beverages still account for a significant share of the total volume of alcohol consumed in many countries. This white paper explores critical issues affecting the problem of illicit alcohol in today’s global alcohol industry. To this end, the paper analyses research conducted in 24 countries in Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe, and examines the major factors shaping their illicit alcohol markets. Illicit alcohol is prevalent in these countries: Of the 42.3 million hl lae of total alcohol consumed each year, approximately 25.8% is illicit. In other words, nearly 10.9 million hl lae of illicit alcohol is consumed annually in these 24 countries alone. This suggests they represent an effective sample for exploring this important topic. Illicit alcoholic beverages are defined as those not complying with the regulations and taxes in the countries where they are consumed, resulting in serious health risks to consumers, revenue loss, and brand degradation for legitimate manufacturers, as well as reduced tax revenue for governments. These products are responsible for hundreds of cases of death and illness due to accidental methanol intoxication, millions of dollars used to fund other criminal activities, and the fiscal loss of billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. Health risks affect the poorest and most vulnerable consumers by contributing to widening health inequalities. The most significant risks and costs for each country depend on the characteristics of the local market for illicit alcohol. The landscape of illicit alcohol is varied and complex, ranging from homemade artisanal beverages sold without the proper sanitary permits to legitimately branded bottles of alcohol smuggled illegally into a country. However, although market characteristics differ across countries, the problem of illicit alcohol exists in every region, in developed and developing countries, urban and rural areas, and higher-income and lower-income neighbourhoods alike.

New York: Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade (Tracit),     42p.

By Ralph Espach, Daniel Haering, Javier Melendez Quinonez, and Miguel Castillo Giron.

The Dilemma of Lawlessness explores in-depth three towns typical of Guatemala’s border regions and examines the economic, political, and security effects of the amplification of the drug trade in their streets, across their rivers, and on their footpaths. The cases reveal that trade has brought prosperity, but also danger, as illegal profits penetrate local businesses, government offices, and churches as longstanding local smuggling networks must contend with or accommodate the interests of Mexican cartels. The authors argue persuasively for the importance of cultivating local community capital to strengthen these communities’ resiliency in the face of these threats.

Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press (MCUP), 2016. 104p.