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International criminal networks mainly from Latin America and Africa -- some with links to terrorism -- are turning West Africa into a key global hub for the distribution, wholesaling, and production of illicit drugs. These groups represent an existential threat to democratic governance of already fragile states in the sub-region because they are using narco-corruption to stage coups d'état, hijack elections, and co-opt or buy political power. Besides a spike in drug-related crime, narcotics trafficking is also fraying West Africa's traditional social fabric and creating a public health crisis, with hundreds of thousands of new drug addicts. While the inflow of drug money may seem economically beneficial to West Africa in the short-term, investors will be less inclined to do business in the long-term if the sub-region is unstable. On net, drug trafficking and other illicit trade represent the most serious challenge to human security in the region since resource conflicts rocked several West African countries in the early 1990s. International aid to West Africa's "war on drugs" is only in an initial stage; progress will be have to be measured in decades or even generations, not years and also unfold in parallel with creating alternative sustainable livelihoods and addressing the longer-term challenges of human insecurity, poverty, and underdevelopment.
Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, Enrique Desmond Arias examines the ongoing problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies.
West Africa is under attack from international criminal networks that are using the subregion as a key global hub for the distribution, wholesale, and increased production of illicit drugs. Most drug trade in West Africa involves cocaine sold in Europe, although heroin is also trafficked to the United States, and the subregion is becoming an export base for amphetamines and their precursors, mainly for East Asian markets and, increasingly, the United States. The most important of these criminal networks are drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) from Latin America-primarily from Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico-partnering with West African criminals. These criminals, particularly Nigerians and Ghanaians, have been involved in the global drug trade for several decades, first with cannabis and later with heroin. The problem has worsened to the point that these networks represent an existential threat to the viability of already fragile states in West Africa as independent, rule of law based entities. As part of this new Latin America- West Africa criminal nexus, Guinea-Bissau is generally recognized as a narco-state where state-capture by traffickers has already occurred. There is also increasingly strong evidence linking terrorist organizations or state sponsors of terrorism to the West Africa drug trade, including Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Hezbollah (allied with elements in the Lebanese diaspora), Venezuela, and Iran. These criminal and terrorist groups are also a threat to U.S. national security, because the illicit profits earned by Latin American drug cartels operating in West Africa strengthen the same crimi nal elements that traffic drugs to North America, and the same North African and Middle Eastern terrorist groups and nations that target the United States. The link to AQIM takes on particular significance in light of this terrorist organization's recent takeover of a vast sector of ungoverned space in northern Mali, along with Touareg allies. West Africa's geographical location between Latin America and Europe made it an ideal transit zone for exploitation by powerful drug cartels and terrorist organizations-much as the Caribbean and Central America had long suffered for being placed between South America's cocaine producers and North America's cocaine users. West Africa's primary operational allure to traffickers is not actually geography, however, but rather its low standards of governance, low levels of law enforcement capacity, and high rates of corruption. Latin American traffickers recently relocated a share of their wholesale distribution from the Western Hemisphere to West Africa, with the subregion moving from being merely a short-term transit point to becoming a storage and staging area for wholesale repackaging, re-routing and sometimes (re-)sale of drugs.
This report is one of several studies conducted by UNODC on organized crime threats around the world. These studies describe what is known about the mechanics of contraband trafficking - the what, who, how, and how much of illicit flows - and discuss their potential impact on governance and development. Their primary role is diagnostic, but they also explore the implications of these findings for policy. Publisher's note.
While the U.S. has failed to reduce the supply of cocaine and heroin entering its borders, it has, however, succeeded in generating widespread, often profoundly damaging, consequences on democracy and human rights in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This paper explores the social climate and circumstances in Mexico that have led to increased cartel activity over the past twenty years. Analysis of these circumstances shows that both Mexico and the United States have failed in their efforts to eradicate cartels and curb violent crime and illicit drug trafficking on both sides of the border. An examination of the Mexican administrations over two decades highlights the efforts and missteps the governments have made that contribute to the rising violent crime rates throughout the country. This paper also discusses potential solutions to those problems and the difficulties both countries face in implementing them
The drug war in Mexico has caused some U.S. analysts to view Mexico as a failed or failing state. While these fears are exaggerated, the problems of widespread crime and violence, government corruption, and inadequate access to justice pose grave challenges for the Mexican state. The Obama administration has therefore affirmed its commitment to assist Mexico through continued bilateral collaboration, funding for judicial and security sector reform, and building "resilient communities."David A. Shirk analyzes the drug war in Mexico, explores Mexico's capacities and limitations, examines the factors that have undermined effective state performance, assesses the prospects for U.S. support to strengthen critical state institutions, and offers recommendations for reducing the potential of state failure. He argues that the United States should help Mexico address its pressing crime and corruption problems by going beyond traditional programs to strengthen the country's judicial and security sector capacity and help it build stronger political institutions, a more robust economy, and a thriving civil society.
This book represents a different approach in the study of the Sahel region in North Africa. Due to the hybrid security threats sweeping across the area, the whole region becomes a new security complex different from Middle East and more related to Western and Central Africa developments, including the impact of drug-trafficking coming from Latin America. This book discusses how the Transnational Organized Crime-Terrorism Nexus has created a very different dynamics from Middle East’s, hitting hard to people, societies and states there. The contributors argue that the countries in the area and the European Union should recognize this new complex and respond properly and differently to this situation.
The primary thrust of the monograph is to explain the linkage of contemporary criminal street gangs (that is, the gang phenomenon or third generation gangs) to insurgency in terms f the instability it wreaks upon government and the concomitant challenge to state sovereignty. Although there are differences between gangs and insurgents regarding motives and modes of operations, this linkage infers that gang phenomena are mutated forms of urban insurgency. In these terms, these "new" nonstate actors must eventually seize political power in order to guarantee the freedom of action and the commercial environment they want. The common denominator that clearly links the gang phenomenon to insurgency is that the third generation gangs' and insurgents' ultimate objective is to depose or control the governments of targeted countries. As a consequence, the "Duck Analogy" applies. Third generation gangs look like ducks, walk like ducks, and act like ducks - a peculiar breed, but ducks nevertheless! This monograph concludes with recommendations for the United States and other countries to focus security and assistance responses at the strategic level. The intent is to help leaders achieve strategic clarity and operate more effectively in the complex politically dominated, contemporary global security arena.