July 24th, 2020
For eight years now, we have heard about the Sahel as the theatre of a war on terror. Sparked in Mali with the Tuareg rebellion of 2012, the conflict, largely waged by jihadist organisations, quickly spread beyond the borders. Islamist groups have constantly been striving to expand their influence. They have built up their power by exploiting state weaknesses in the face of deeply rooted economic issues and socio-ethnic tensions already amplified by climate change. However, a key ingredient of their success lies in the dangerous potential of organised crime and trafficking networks in the Sahel. This piece will first look at the criminal rings that have contributed to turning the Sahel into a powder keg, and for which the conflict has played a catalyzing effect. Then, it will develop the argument that those trafficking practices nurture each other, which makes them even more arduous to overcome.
By Fabiana Natale and Gilles de Valk
June 14th, 2020
For this second episode of Conversing COVID, we interviewed Mikel Irizar, Operations Specialist at INTERPOL’s Command and Coordination Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In our conversation, we discussed the consequences of the pandemic for politics, economics, and organised crime in Latin America, and its impact on the work INTERPOL is doing.
April 22nd, 2020
Recent far-right extremist attacks in Germany, like the attacks in Hanau on the 19th of February this year and the attack in Halle in late 2019, have started a new debate [1]. The media regularly reports about new right-wing extremist movements and far-right ideologies that are on the rise. However, others argue that the latest attacks in Germany are not as surprising as they may seem. The case of the National Socialist Underground (NSU) which took place almost ten years ago gives an idea of the German intelligence systems’ struggle to investigate potential violence stemming from right-wing extremism in its early stages.
March 27th, 2020
Guatemalans have welcomed the anti-impunity commission that works to combat high level corruption and abuses, but after over a decade of prominent arrests and government pushback, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales threatened a pre-emptive withdrawal from the effort in January 2019. The decision is tied to a pattern of US-led norm breaking, with implications for justice in Guatemala and the region.