International Day for the Prevention of and Fight against All Forms of Transnational Organized Crime

  This report series provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamics driving illegal mining in Ghana , its regional spread, and the actors profiting from it. Based on three years of field research, remote sensing analysis, interviews and desk research, part 1 examines two key case study regions—Western and Savannah—and explores how unlicensed ASGM has grown in scale, complexity, and impact. Part 2 will explore illicit gold supply chains and financial networks in more depth. In places like the Western region, satellite imagery shows dramatic increases in mining activity, with many operations occurring outside officially licensed zones. The environmental impacts are stark. Unregulated use of mercury in gold processing is harming water systems , while mining expansion is causing deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Remote sensing tools—including radar interferometry, flow accumulation analysis, and computer vision models—have been employed to track these developments and predict f...

Recognizing the importance of illicit economies within West Africa’s conflict ecosystem , the GI-TOC launched the illicit hub mapping project in 2022. The initial phase identified 280 hubs of illicit economies across 18 focus countries. A quantitative metric, the Illicit Economies and Instability Monitor (‘ Monitor ’), was then applied to analyze the extent to which the illicit economies in each hub fuelled instability. This assessment was based on 30 indicators, drawing on expert analysis and existing data. Three years on, the second iteration of the illicit hub mapping project is in the final stages of development. Building on important additions to the Monitor and an extensive existing evidence base, the 2025 edition will capture the most recent trends relating to illicit economies and instability across West Africa . The updated illicit hub mapping allows for analysis of illicit economy engagement by actor type, as well as a spatial analysis of illicit hubs . It also considers t...

  - Summary highlights - Conflict, coups and containers: why the Sahel cocaine routes were disrupted. Northbound trans-Sahelian trafficking routes underpin a substantial minority of cocaine exports from West Africa to Europe. While available evidence indicates that these routes experienced a resurgence between 2019 and 2023, recent research reveals that this trend is likely to have been disrupted by political upheaval and armed conflicts since mid-2023. Trafficking volumes through northern Niger are reported to have fallen sharply, though trafficking routes through northern Mali remain largely resilient and have restructured operations. Indications of significant cocaine trafficking in southern Mali should largely not be read as north-bound flows. Instead, they reflect West Africa’s growing role as a recontainerization hub, with routes between coastal points of import and export shaped by the export potential of subregional maritime ports.  Read more The shadow constellat...

  The militant Islamist group al-Shabaab has long remained influential in Mogadishu through its sophisticated extortion system, which demands zakat payments —forced charitable tax— and levies on trade and real estate transactions. The group reportedly generates over US$100 million annually, with an estimated one-third of its revenue derived from Mogadishu alone. The report highlights urgent gaps in Anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) enforcement . While Somalia introduced its first domestic sanctions list in 2024, poor compliance and lack of institutional capacity continue to hinder impact. Recommendations include enhanced AML/CFT training for non-financial sectors, incentives for compliance, biometric ID enrolment, and smarter sanctions enforcement through international collaboration.