- The authorities of Trinidad and Tobago are considering the legalisation of cannabis. In late December, the government announced that the drug will be decriminalised in May or June 2019. To this, some groups of the society responded that only legal cultivation could prevent the violence linked to organised crime.
- In Colombia, criminal groups are taking advantage of the arrival of thousands of Venezuelans fleeing their country to establish false tourist offices and to earn money out of human smuggling, human trafficking and sexual exploitation.
- The Human Right Watch World Report 2019 points the climate of insecurity and the increasing violence in Nigeria’s northern states. According to the report, 1,200 people were killed and 200,000 displaced in 2018.
- The Ghanaian journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale was killed on January 16 in the country’s capital Accra. Well know for shedding a light on a corruption scandal involving the national football association, he had recently made a complaint to police after a national deputy called the population to punish him on TV.
- On Thursday 17 January, a car bomb attack killed over 20 people in the General Santander police academy in Bogota, Colombia.
- On Friday 18 January, the explosion of a pipeline in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, caused the death of at least 79 people, while 66 more are injured. According to the oil national company PEMEX, the explosion was triggered by illegal taps in the pipeline. Lately, the Mexican government decided to close key pipelines – thus creating gas shortages – to tackle illegal oil extraction by criminal groups.
CaribbeanCocaineColombiaCorruptionDecriminalisationDrug policyGhanaMaliMexicoNewsbriefingsSecurity contextTraffickingWest Africa
