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• Organized crime plundering West Africa: UN 

Fewer drugs have been flowing into Europe from West Africa in recent months but organized crime is plundering the sub-region through illicit trafficking in arms, women, cigarettes and toxic waste, according to a UN report released Tuesday.

"Less drugs are flowing through West Africa. We must ensure that this downward trend continues," said Antonio Maria Costa (photo), executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Since 2004, Colombian drug traffickers have increasingly made use of West African countries (Ghana, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Togo, …) as a transit area for their cocaine shipments to Europe, according to UNODC.

But while the amount of cocaine passing through West Africa has dropped from a high in 2006 of 40 tons, one-quarter of all cocaine entering Europe, other illicit items such as cigarettes, arms, toxic waste, counterfeit medicines as well as oil and other natural resources like hardwood and diamonds are being trafficked through the region, according to the UNODC Threat Assessment. . . .

As much as 80 percent of the cigarette market in some west and north African countries is illicit, meaning that most of the smoking going on in these countries is profiting criminals.

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