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Institutional responses to the illegal narcotic trade in West Africa

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (International Relations), 2017 / The trafficking of illegal narcotics on the African continent and into West Africa has resulted
in human insecurity and state insecurity in the region. Furthermore, it has helped facilitate
shadow economies such as the illegal trade in fire arms and human trafficking within the region
deteriorating law and order, judicial enforcement, and political institutions in these countries.
The West African region serves as a transit point in the distribution of narcotics to Europe from
Latin America and has increasingly become a destination in drug trafficking.
Various national, regional, and international strategies have been undertaken in combating this
perceived scourge. The African Union, European Union, United Nations, and West African
states themselves have all provided frameworks in combating drug trafficking in Africa.
Despite these various strategies drug trafficking still thrives in West Africa. This thesis will
assess one of these strategies that being the West African Coast Initiative (WACI). This thesis
attempts to outline the various reasons for the growing importance of West Africa in the
regional and international drug trade whilst assessing the impact WACI has had in dealing with
the drug trade in West Africa.
The reason the paper seeks to assess the effectiveness of the West African Coast Initiative is to
highlight the obstacles and challenges the strategy has faced over the last eight years of its
existence, to make recommendations in this regard, and to identify specific shortcomings in
African institutional efforts in engaging with threats that exist outside the state / XL2018

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/25690
Date January 2017
CreatorsMasenya, Siyabonga
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
FormatOnline resource (99 leaves), application/pdf, application/pdf

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