- The main findings of the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2018 were discussed by the Executive Director of the UNODC and the Member States in Vienna on January 7, 2019.
- On January 7, the UN Secretary General met with the Guatemalan Foreign Minister at the UN headquarters in NY and he firmly rejected Guatemala’s initiative to terminate the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) which is mandated to end in September 2019.
- In Colombia, deforestation is reaching alarming levels, with an increase of 23% of hectares lost between 2016 and 2017. Deforestation is both a consequence and an incentive for criminal groups who are involved in land grabbing, wood trafficking, illegal mining and drug trafficking in the Amazon region.
- In 2018, drug-trafficking continued to be Latin-American countries’ main earner for criminal groups. The global rise in cocaine and heroin consumption is increasing the drug-traffickers’ activities and profit.
- The trafficking ban introduced by Niger in 2015 might be responsible for a decrease in the overall number of migrants smuggled through the countries.
- In the port of Paramaribo, Suriname, authorities seized over 2.3 tonnes of cocaine hidden in containers filled with rice. For years now, the country has been subjected to drug-trafficking, chiefly because of its geographically strategic location within the South-American continent.
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