To browse Academia. Daniel Ruiz examines the way in which investigative journalism focusing on drug trafficking in West Africa has helped inspire national and international efforts to combat the crime. Investigative journalism that aims to prise out information that the state or certain businesses want to keep undisclosed has been unthinkable under many postcolonial African regimes.
However, since the promulgation of democratic constitutions, a generation of ambitious investigative journalists has grown up in Africa. Therefore, the author suggests that both the AU and ECOWAS must create a more stable legal environment for investigative journalists, as their reports can help these institutions and national governments protect human rights. There has recently been rising concern amongst Western nations over drug trafficking through West Africa, with Guinea-Bissau identified as a major regional conduit for cocaine.
Increasingly Guinea-Bissau's internal political and military turmoil has also been linked to the influence of drug money. This paper will examine this drug trafficking in the context of Guinea-Bissau's history and address what impacts it is having on "human security" in the nation, examining the categories of political, economic, health and personal security. The argument will be made that considering the already low levels of human security in Guinea-Bissau, the impact of drug trafficking may not actually be that significant, and that rather than focusing on drugs as Guinea-Bissau's primary problem, trafficking should be considered as only a symptom of deeper underdevelopment due to European colonization, and the effects of global economic structures and policies.
Since a United Nations report cited West Africa as the new front for cocaine trafficking by South American Drug Barons, media reports have linked several governments to the trade. Some analysts linked political instability in a few West African countries to the cocaine trade. The Proliferation of banks and the flow of excess capital from unknown horizons sounded the alarm on trafficking in drugs as fundamental driving mechanisms.
In spite of regional and international efforts to confront the trade, seizures of large amounts of cocaine in Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau brought to light compelling realities of the drug trade as West Africa's newest peripheral vulnerability.
