4 May 2015
Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference Calls for Africa-wide Strategy
story highlights

African States gathered in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo, for the International Conference on the Illegal Exploitation and Illicit Trade in African Wildlife, have called for greater coordinated intelligence and law enforcement, involving communities in Africa, and working with transit and destination markets outside the continent.

Illegal_Wildlife_Trade_conference30 April 2015: African States gathered in Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo, for the International Conference on the Illegal Exploitation and Illicit Trade in African Wildlife, have called for greater coordinated intelligence and law enforcement, involving communities in Africa, and working with transit and destination markets outside the continent.

The Conference, held from 27-30 April 2015, sought to advance the first-ever Africa-wide strategy and action plan to tackle the illegal trade in wild fauna and flora, to be further considered at the next African Union (AU) Heads of State Summit. It was organized under the leadership of the Republic of Congo, in partnership with, among others, the African Union Commission (AUC), and with support from the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Lusaka Agreement Task Force and the UN Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC). The Conference built on the momentum and outcomes of the 2014 London and 2015 Kasane High Level Conferences on Illegal Wildlife Trade.

Addressing the Conference, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stressed for the need to extend every effort to put an end to environmental crime, especially the illegal trade in wildlife. John Scanlon, CITES Secretary-General, underlined that illegal trade in wildlife is a serious transnational organized crime that no country or region can fight on its own. He noted that the draft strategy shows the need for a collective global, regional and national effort to work across source, transit and destination States.

At the end of the Conference, the Republic of Congo organized a burning of seized hardwood timber and illegal ivory. On the same day, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) burned ten tonnes of confiscated elephant ivory. [Conference Website] [Brazzaville Draft Strategy] [Brazzaville Declaration] [UNEP Press Release] [UNDP News on African leaders to develop common plan for stopping wildlife crime] [UNDP News on Congo Republic burns its entire stockpile of seized ivory] [CITES Secretary-General’s remarks to the first destruction of confiscated elephant ivory in the United Arab Emirates]

related posts