In this feature, part of a series exploring the fight against trafficking in the Sahel, UN News focuses on the illegal arms trade that is fuelling conflict and terrorism. In the Sahel, home to 300 million people, it’s a buyer’s market for guns.
Insurgency and banditry plague the region, rooted in, among other things, endemic intercommunal tensions, clashes between farmers and herders, a spread of violent religious extremism, and competition over such scarce resources as water and arable land amid extreme climate shocks. “Non-State groups are fighting among themselves for supremacy, pushing States to the margin, and causing untold misery to millions of people who had to flee their communities to seek safety,” Giovanie Biha, Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), told the UN Security Council, presenting the Secretary-General’s report on the region.
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Source: United Nations