This event aims to discuss and compare different examples of drug markets and associated insecurity, with a particular focus on current examples in Africa. This will draw on recent work by the Small Arms Survey on the intersections between drug and arms trafficking in West Africa, and from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime on the heroin trade along the East African coast, particularly in Northern Mozambique, and the relationship between drugs markets, corrupt and conflict actors and regional instability. Professor Carbonnier of the ICRC and the Graduate Institute will bring a cross-regional comparison in discussing how lessons learned from supply-reduction approaches to drugs markets in Afghanistan may be applied to emerging conflicts and the role of drug economies in Africa.

More about the Drug Policy Week

Participants:

Tuesday Reitano
Deputy Director, Global Initiative

Simone Haysom
Senior Analyst, Global Initiative

Gilles Carbonnier
Professor of Development Economics, Graduate Institute;
Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Matthias Nowak
Researcher, Small Arms Survey

Tuesday Reitano is Deputy Director at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime and a senior research advisor at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, where she leads the ENACT programme on behalf of the GI. Tuesday was formerly the director of CT MORSE, an independent policy and monitoring unit for the EU’s programmes in counter-terrorism, and for 12 years was a policy specialist in the UN System, including with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Development Group (UNDG) and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Simone Haysom is a Senior Analyst with the Global Initiative with expertise in corruption and organised crime, and almost a decade of experience conducting qualitative fieldwork in challenging environments.

Gilles Carbonnier is Professor of Development Economics at the Graduate
Institute and, since April 2018, Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). His research and publications focus on the economics of humanitarian crises and responses, the energy-commodity trade-development nexus, as well as international development cooperation. Until early 2018, he served as Editor-in-Chief of International Development Policy and President of the Board of Directors of CERAH, the Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action.
Professor Carbonnier has over 20 years of professional experience in international trade, development cooperation and humanitarian action. From 1989 to 1991, he was a delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Iraq, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and El Salvador. He joined the ICRC again from 1999 to 2006 as the organisation’s economic adviser and head of private-sector relations. Between 1992 and 1996, he was in charge of international development cooperation programmes and multilateral trade negotiations with the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), and advised Vietnam on its accession to the WTO between 1996 and 1999. Prof. Carbonnier served as Vice-President of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes until 2017 and sits in the Federal Commission for International Development Cooperation and advises investment funds over sustainability and human rights issues.

Matthias Nowak is a researcher in development and security related issues, especially focusing on the human cost of armed violence and the illicit proliferation of small arms and light weapons. Since 2010, Matthias works as a researcher for the Small Arms Survey, and has conducted extensive fieldwork in fragile and conflict-affected states on illicit arms trafficking, counter-proliferation measures, and the impacts of small arms and light weapons on people’s lives. He is the author and co-author of numerous publications in English, Spanish, and French. Matthias has led projects in Latin America and the Caribbean for the Survey based in Bogota between 2012 and 2017. He is now based in Geneva and his current focus area is West- and Central Africa.

Picture credits:
An unidentified man smokes marijuana next to a no drugs sign at the New Afrika Shrine, Lagos, Nigeria, Feb. 6, 2011 (AP photo by Sunday Alamba).