DAKAR, 8 July 2009 (IRIN) - Contraband trafficking threatens rule of law, democracy and the health of people throughout West Africa, a region that offers criminals "resources, a strategic location, weak governance and an endless source of foot soldiers who see few viable alternatives to a life in crime," said UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Antonio Costa.

Illegal income from trafficking rivals West African countries' entire GDPs, fuels conflict and corruption and spawns disease, according to the UN crime agency's recent trafficking threat assessment.

UNODC measured the flows of cocaine through the region, women from West Africa to Europe, oil from Nigeria, cigarettes from Europe and Asia to West and North Africa, counterfeit medicines from Asia to West Africa, small arms to West Africa, toxic waste from Europe to West Africa and would-be migrants from West Africa to Europe, concluding that smuggled oil generates the most money – more than US$1 billion annually–and is the greatest rule-of-law challenge in the region. Smuggled oil "directly destabilises the most powerful economy in the region [Nigeria], with implications far beyond the Niger Delta," says the report.

On the corrosive nature of smuggling profits, the report noted: "This money accrues to law-breakers and corrupt officials who may have an interest in maintaining state weakness…Where the rule of law is weak, the lawless prosper, and they further cultivate the disorder that provides their best defence."

Antonio Mazzitelli, the director of UNODC's West African office in Senegal, told IRIN illegal money undermines order. "Those with access to funds in West Africa have enormous power to corrupt. It is not alarmist to link trafficking to political instability."

Citing recent military takeovers in Mauritania and Guinea, assassinations in Guinea Bissau of the president and chief of armed forces and a constitution controversy in Niger that the president's political opponents have labelled a coup attempt, Mazzitelli told IRIN the region has political tensions that are easily exploited by large sums of cash from criminal activity.

While Mazzitelli said that forces other than contraband contribute to breakdowns in constitutional order in West Africa, "illicit revenues complicate the clean-up and can worsen already fragile states."

While the UN estimates the flow of cocaine in West Africa has dropped by half in the last two years, it maintains some 20 tons are still smuggled through the region each year, with a street value of about $1 billion.

Less profitable, but equally deadly – according to the World Health Organization (WHO) – are smuggled counterfeit and substandard pharmaceuticals that can lead to drug-resistant bacteria strains, which even authorized medication cannot cure.

Up to 60 percent of anti-infection medication sold in Africa and Asia is either fake or substandard, according to a 2006 independent study published in the Lancet medical journal.

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