The CITES Convention and trade in animals and plants

The CITES tries to fight wildlife trafficking which has increased considerably over the last few decades and undermines the objectives and the legal provisions of the CITES Convention. As it is clear that the CITES Secretariat, the Conference of the Parties and its different subcommittees neither have the institutional capacity nor the resources to combat illegal trade - CITES was set up to organise legal trade - CITES is pooling experience and forces with a number of international governmental and non-governmental bodies to fight wildlife trafficking. Only some of these cooperation activities can be mentioned hereafter.

What is remarkable in this attempt is the fact that the borderline between public authorities and private initiatives has largely disappeared. Private initiatives and organisations assist in working at local level, help in preventing poaching of animals, supply expertise and scientists to public authorities and support local people in their attempts to preserve the indigenous animals and plants (whale watching, eco-safaris, natural parks management etc). They bring valuable factual information to the knowledge of public authorities and gradually form, together with them, a global network to combat wildlife trafficking.

Together with INTERPOL, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the World Bank and the World Customs Organisation, the CITES set up, in 2010, the "International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime" (ICCWC). The consortium set itself the objective of supporting countries and regions in the enforcement of international and national law enforcement. It elaborated documents ("toolkits") to better tackle wildlife and forest crime, made available support teams which could assist countries where wildlife trafficking had occurred, and provided for extensive training programs, in particular for developing countries. An intensive exchange of data between the members of ICCWC increases the efficiency of the consortium.