Charge these end users as terrorism financiers and save Africa’s animals

This year is a typically bittersweet Earth Day — as we celebrate our environment we also mourn the fact that one of Africa’s greatest animals, the Northern Great Rhino, is now functionally extinct.

It is time to recognise the failure and adopt a new approach to combating poaching in Africa — one that is effective in prosecuting criminals, deters involvement in the trade, and encourages nations to enforce international laws and norms. Poaching funds terrorism, so let us treat illegal wildlife product buyers as financiers of terrorism.

A legal analysis of global poaching and illegal wildlife trade systems supports end-user complicity and conspiracy: individuals who buy and sell poached animals can be charged as terrorist financiers, and countries that do not prosecute this trade by their nationals or within their borders can be indicted for contributing to the scourge of global terrorism.

Firstly, the traditional investigatory and prosecutorial tools used to fight perpetrators are based in traditional criminal jurisprudence — generally for violating trade, organised crime, and wildlife protection laws. At the same time, prosecution for these crimes has been shouldered by already over-burdened African justice systems where these acts take place.
The alignment of causality between acts of wildlife poaching being committed and the effects of terrorist financing realised provides a jurisprudential basis for the justice sector to treat poachers as terrorists.

LEGAL AMMUNITION

This significant increase in the gravity of the crime gives police and prosecutors legal ammunition, policy priorities, and increased resources (both domestically and internationally) that are not generally available for woefully under-funded efforts at prosecuting wildlife poachers and traders at the local and national level.

The focus, priority, and amount of resources available for investigating and prosecuting terrorists will likely always dwarf those allocated for the slaughter of our living natural resources.

Secondly, this jurisprudential paradigm also holds another important criminological element currently inoperative — deterrence.

No matter how empty the science behind its use, the burgeoning nouveau riche of Asia have an insatiable appetite for the body parts of the most majestic animals of Africa for what they believe are medicinal purposes and decorative arts.

While their consciences’ are clearly not taxed by the horrific violence inflicted on Africa and her animals for the sake of their penile enlargement efforts or carved mantelpiece knick-knacks, the threat of being tried and treated as a terrorist will be taken more seriously.

Finally, this model includes a geopolitical motivation for countries of wildlife trafficking transit, banking, and end-use to be more active in efforts to fight this transnational crime: no country’s politicians want to be labelled as a State sponsor of global terrorism.

LITTLE SUCCESS

Asian nations have made multiple grandiose pronouncements about their disapproval of this illicit trade by their nationals and within their borders. However, there has been little success in stemming the trade in these countries. As has been shown repeatedly in the efforts to combat other global crimes such as drugs and human trafficking, it comes down to matters of economics: global endeavours are doomed to failure when efforts are limited to countries of supply when there is little effort in the countries of demand.

Due to the gravity of terrorism, however, most countries will do whatever is necessary to avoid being labelled as complicit with terrorist activities.

This paradigm shift in anti-poaching prosecution will require the concerted and determined efforts of executives, legislatures, and justice systems across Africa. End-user countries will likely not be receptive to changes in the domestic laws of African states, the international law of treaties and the UN, or global opinion that will require them to significantly upgrade their own laws and the resources required to prosecute them. It is, however, one of Africa’s last opportunities to save these precious resources.

Perhaps, if executed properly, this model could both stem the enormous slaughter of Africa’s living natural resources and rob terrorists of one of their most consistent sources of revenue.

The writer is the managing director of Dragoman International, an Africa-focused advisory and consulting firm in Cape Town, South Africa. [email protected]. Twitter: @dragoman_intl