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Florquin, Nicolas, Sigrid Lipott, and Francis Wairagu. 2019 ‘Excerpts on Trafficking - Libya.’ Weapons Compass: Mapping Illicit Small Arms Flows in Africa, pp. 42-59. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. 1 January

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While local actors who are involved in ant trafficking in firearms tend do so as a sideline to their main activity of smuggling legal commodities, in some cases, in order to maintain a low profile, criminal syndicates outsource the transport of weapons and drugs to local actors. In the Sahara–Sahel, conflict in Mali and Libya and the subsequent proliferation of armed groups in border areas led to the militarization and increased criminalization of traditional trading routes, which fell under the control of powerful armed actors. Participants in the present study noted that the general population, including migrants and refugees, are sometimes used as 'mules' to transport weapons. For instance, Uganda noted the involvement of women in such trafficking, while in the Central African Republic in 2014 a woman accompanied by her child attempted to smuggle shotgun ammunition from Cameroon in a bag of onions; the ammunition was intended for anti-Balaka militia. (p.42)

The Small Arms Survey extracted information from these reports relating to the Central African Republic, Libyan, Somalian/Eritrean, South Sudanese, and Sudanese sanctions regimes in order to carry out trend analysis on the reported small arms flows that have occurred since 2011. Preliminary analysis of the data indicates that the largest cases of transfer diversions have been directed to Libya, and notably before the strengthening of the arms embargo on that country in mid-2014. (p. 47)

For instance, weapons legally shipped to Libya after 2011 under the UN arms embargo's exception procedures have subsequently been diverted after they reached Libyan soil. UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2009 of September 2011 allowed for exceptions to the arms embargo provided that the transfers were intended for national authorities and the UN Sanctions Committee was notified in advance. Until August 2014 the committee did not reject any such notifications, which by that time totalled 60,000 handguns, 65,000 assault rifles, 15,000 sub-machine guns, 4,000 machine guns, and 60 million rounds of ammunition. While the exact proportion of these notified weapons that were actually delivered to Libya cannot be determined, it is clear that some have leaked to unauthorized actors after reaching the country. (p. 49)

Finally, UN monitoring efforts have revealed that Africa is not only a recipient of embargo-breaking arms transfers, but also at times a source of such transfers. This is the case for arms transfers out of Libya, which fall under the scope of the two-way Libyan arms embargo. By 2014 the UN Panel of Experts was investigating transfers of illicit weapons from Libya to no fewer than 14 countries in Northern, Eastern, Western, and Middle Africa, and as far as the Middle East. (p. 49)

In Chad and Niger sizeable convoys of combatants and weapons were regularly intercepted between 2011 and 2013 transiting to other countries such as Mali and Sudan. Among the looted materiel, hundreds—if not thousands—of man-portable air defence systems capable of downing commercial airliners escaped from state control, with many subsequently being retrieved in Libya and several others in Mali, Tunisia, Lebanon, and possibly as far as the Central African Republic. (p. 50)

More diverse trafficking dynamics are now at play to supply the demand for weapons in the subregion. Trafficking from Libya persists, but on a much more limited scale. In northern Chad and Niger, for instance, it has recently consisted primarily of small numbers of individual weapons being smuggled to supply local demand. (p. 50)

The proliferation of readily convertible imitation firearms was initially particularly significant in Northern Africa, and notably in Libya, where both merchants and end users, including armed groups, are converting them. Major shipments of readily convertible alarm weapons were intercepted from Turkey in or on their way to Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. This included the previously mentioned seizure of no less than 25,000 Turkish alarm pistols in 2017 at the Port of Kismayo, Somalia. From these locations they appear to have been smuggled by land and seized in converted form in a range of neighbouring countries, including in Kenya, Niger, and Somalia. Other Small Arms Survey inquiries have revealed the circulation of imitation handguns in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Guinea, Mauritania, and Zimbabwe. (pp. 58-59)

ID: Q13989

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