Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambique and Brazil are part of the list of “focus” states in the US State Department’s 2021 END Wildlife Trafficking Report, in which four out of six countries listed as “of concern” are African.
Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRCongo), Madagascar and Nigeria, in Africa, as well as Cambodia and Laos, in the Far East, are the countries where the respective “governments actively engage in or knowingly profit from trafficking in endangered or threatened species”, and are therefore considered by the US Administration as “countries of concern” in terms of wildlife trafficking.
Brazil and Mozambique are, in turn, on the list of 28 “focus countries”, which includes the six “countries of concern”, and are considered “major source of wildlife trafficking products or their derivatives, a major transit point of wildlife trafficking products or their derivatives, or a major consumer of wildlife trafficking products,” according to the report.
“This determination is based on analysis of the statutory criteria in the Act and does not reflect a positive or negative judgement of the listed countries or indicate that these countries are not working diligently to combat wildlife trafficking.,” reads the report.
Likewise, the designation “countries of concern” does not indicate that “all parts” of the governments concerned “are or have been involved in wildlife trafficking”.
“This designation [countries of concern] does not indicate that all parts of the government are or have been involved in wildlife trafficking, but that there are serious concerns that either high-level or systemic government involvement has occurred,”. the State Department clarifies.
The current constitution of the 2021 Focus Countries list of 28 countries was established in the 2020 report and is unchanged in this year’s report, released this Thursday, and which the State Department has just submitted to the US Congress for approval.
The countries on the 2021 Focus Countries list are, in alphabetical order, Bangladesh, Brazil, Burma, Cameroon, Cambodia, China, Gabon, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Laos, Madagascar, Malaysia, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Kenya, DR Congo, Republic of Congo, Thailand, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Vietnam, South Africa, Philippines, and Zimbabwe.
Inclusion on this list “appears to have contributed to increased attention to combating wildlife trafficking in some focus countries,” the State Department estimates.
The US government working group – co-chaired by the secretary of state, secretary of the interior, and attorney general – that produces this report annually has developed several indicators to monitor actions in each country supported by the US network on the ground – missions and various US agencies – to combat wildlife trafficking in the focus countries.
The indicators are designed to measure the inputs, outputs, or outcomes of law enforcement capacity building and cooperation efforts, policy reforms, and demand reduction actions tailored to each country, as well as severity of crimes, and so on.
During the last reporting period, in 25 out of 28 countries seizures of goods, proceeds, and wild animals or wildlife products were reported by local authorities. On the other hand, 22 countries reported data on arrests, prosecutions and convictions of wildlife traffickers. Data on “demand reduction indicators were also collected for 14 of the 28 focus countries”. The countries concerned are not discriminated against.
“Wildlife trafficking remains a serious transnational crime that threatens security, economic prosperity, the rule of law, longstanding conservation efforts, and human health,” the report highlights.
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