Firearms Trafficking in the Sahel

In the Sahel, home to 300 million people, it’s a buyer’s market for guns. Insurgency and banditry plague the region, rooted in, among other things, endemic intercommunal tensions, clashes between farmers and herders, a spread of violent religious extremism, and competition over such scarce resources as water and arable land amid extreme climate shocks.

Behind the chaos and misery simmers a thriving illicit arms trade.

Many arms trafficking hubs in the Sahel rim borders or transportation routes where multiple criminal activities take place, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Illegal markets – often hidden in plain sight in towns and villages along strategic corridors – lay unhampered by the presence of authorities.

All the groups involved in clashes are now dealing with firearms and ammunition, according to a recent UNODC report on firearms trafficking.

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