Drug and firearms law in Benin: statutes on record and in force

Benin, in Africa, is party to all four of the instruments tracked here, the last of them since 2004. It appears on neither FATF list. Its confirmed instrument on record is the Loi n°97-025 du 18 juillet 1997 sur le contrôle des drogues et des précurseurs of 1997. The record is set out in the order the obligations arrive: treaty first, statute second, enforcement last.

Tile cartogram of the covered jurisdictions with Benin picked out — Fig. — Benin in the covered set of 106 source and transit jurisdictions.

International framework

Benin is bound by all four instruments this dataset tracks, the earliest from 1997 and the most recent from 2004.

Instrument	Adopted	Ratified or acceded	Depositary reference
1988 Convention	1988	23 May 1997	Chapter VI-19
UNTOC	2000	30 Aug 2004	Chapter XVIII-12
UNCAC	2003	14 Oct 2004	Chapter XVIII-14
Firearms Protocol	2001	30 Aug 2004	Chapter XVIII-12-c

What each instrument obliges a party to do is set out once, per instrument, in the conventions reference. The dates above are what is specific to Benin: they are the points from which each obligation began to bind, taken from the depositary's own status tables.

National legislation

These are the instruments an official source confirms for Benin. The list is what could be cited, not necessarily everything in force.

Loi n°97-025 du 18 juillet 1997 sur le contrôle des drogues et des précurseurs (No. 97-025) — A principal instrument in its own right, confirmed on the register named below; its subject matter is not stated on the face of its title. Confirmed against the UNODC legal library, checked 2026-07-30.

Enforcement authorities

3 bodies are named in the record for Benin, each confirmed on Benin's own government domain. Naming the body matters because the treaty obligations above bind the state, while the powers to act on them sit with particular institutions under national law.

Body	Function	Confirmed on
Police Républicaine	criminal investigation	sgg.gouv.bj
Direction Générale des Douanes et Droits indirects	named in the legislation	douanes.gouv.bj
Direction Générale des Forêts et des Ressources Naturelles	named in the legislation	sgg.gouv.bj

Ratification sequence

A count of four tells you less than the sequence that produced it. Benin came to these instruments over 7 years, beginning with the 1988 Convention in 1997 and ending with the Firearms Protocol in 2004. Measured against each instrument's own adoption, the shortest gap was the UNCAC at 1 year, the longest the 1988 Convention at 9.

Benin became a party to the 1988 Convention in 1997, 9 years after it was adopted — slower than the median lag of 5 years across this dataset.

A complete treaty position assembled over decades is not the same as one assembled at once. For the 7 years between 1997 and 2004, Benin was bound by the 1988 Convention but not yet by the UNTOC, the UNCAC or the Firearms Protocol. An obligation that arrives late does not reach conduct that took place before it, which is why the sequence matters to a prosecutor and not only to a chronology.

On coverage, Benin is one of 81 jurisdiction s here party to 4 of the four, against 81 party to all four. Within Africa the dataset holds 53 jurisdictions, of which 6 are currently under FATF increased monitoring.

Financial-crime monitoring

As of the FATF plenary statements of 2026-06-19, Benin is recorded as Not listed . Nothing here is a finding about Benin's financial controls; it records only that neither statement names it. How the plenary reaches these decisions is covered on the FATF grey list tracker.

Questions about drug and firearms law in Benin

Which drug-control conventions has Benin ratified?

All four: the 1988 Convention on 23 May 1997, the UNTOC on 30 Aug 2004, the UNCAC on 14 Oct 2004, the Firearms Protocol on 30 Aug 2004.

Is Benin on the FATF grey list?

No. Benin appears on neither the increased-monitoring list nor the call-for-action list in the FATF statements of 19 June 2026.

What national drug legislation is on record for Benin?

Loi n°97-025 du 18 juillet 1997 sur le contrôle des drogues et des précurseurs (No. 97-025), confirmed against the UNODC legal library.

Which register confirms the legislation on this page?

Each instrument names its own. For Benin that is the UNODC legal library. The entry links straight to the document, so the wording can be checked rather than taken on trust.

What is source tier A, and why is this record in it?

Tier A means a national instrument has been confirmed against an official register — for Benin, 1 of them. The treaty dates and the listing status are separately sourced, so all three layers of this record carry a citation.

Why does the ratification date matter?

The date is the point from which the obligations bind. Benin's earliest of these commitments dates from 1997, its most recent from 2004; the gap between them is a rough measure of how long the framework took to assemble.

Sources

Ratification dates: United Nations Treaty Collection, depositary status tables (chapters VI-19, XVIII-12, XVIII-14, XVIII-12-c). Checked 2026-07-29.
Listing status: FATF, Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring and High-Risk Jurisdictions subject to a Call for Action, 2026-06-19.
Loi n°97-025 du 18 juillet 1997 sur le contrôle des drogues et des précurseurs: the UNODC legal library, checked 2026-07-30.