Air transport and destabilizing commodity flows

Destabilizing and illicit flows of small arms and light weapons, cocaine, tobacco and valuable raw materials fuel the war economies that have devastated much of Africa in recent decades. This Policy Paper unequivocally establishes the role of air transport across the full spectrum of these commodity flows. It also demonstrates the extent to which air transport actors named in United Nations and other arms trafficking-related reports have become enmeshed in humanitarian aid, peace support, stability operations and defence logistics supply chains. This pioneering analysis provides a range of policy options available to the European Union (EU) for improving mechanisms for monitoring and controlling these air transport actors. It shows that existing EU tools and empirically proven programmes can be adapted and applied with minimal cost and effort to address some of the most pressing security threats facing the world today.