VIENNA, March 13 (UPI) -- The growing traffic of narcotics through Africa by transnational criminal groups has prompted a new U.N.-African Union initiative aimed at tackling the threat.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime has partnered with the AU for a new joint initiative targeting the escalating use of African countries as transit hubs for illicit narcotics, the United Nations reported.
The partnership, announced Thursday at the at a Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna, will begin by focusing on West Africa, where transnational criminal groups are increasingly exploiting weak governments and porous borders to traffic narcotics from the Caribbean to Europe.
The joint initiative is part of a larger effort to map out "cooperative strategies to confront the world drug problem (and target) areas of policy-making, norm-setting and capacity-building at all levels," according to a news release.
