Tackling Illicit Trafficking in Wildlife

A/RES/71/326No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 13Integrated and coordinated implementation of and follow-up to the outcomes of the major United Nations conferences and summits in the economic, social and related fields, published in 2017.

What other versions does this mandate have?

7 versions · 2015–2025

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/79/313

2025A/RES/79/313Tackling illicit trafficking in wildlifeLatestCompare with previous version
2023A/RES/77/325Tackling illicit trafficking in wildlifeCompare with previous version
2021A/RES/75/311Tackling illicit trafficking in wildlifeCompare with previous version
2019A/RES/73/343Tackling illicit trafficking in wildlifeCompare with previous version
2017A/RES/71/326Tackling illicit trafficking in wildlifeCompare with previous version

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What subjects does this mandate have?

3 topics

Crime Prevention Illicit Traffic Wildlife

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2019.

2019A/73/947Tackling illicit trafficking in wildlife report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

31 operative paragraphs

Stresses its determination to implement fully and without delay the commitments undertaken in its resolutions 69/314 and 70/301;

Recognizes the economic, social and environmental impacts of illicit trafficking in wildlife, where firm and strengthened action needs to be taken on both the supply and the demand sides, and re-emphasizes the importance, in this regard, of effective international cooperation among Member States, relevant multilateral environmental agreements and international organizations;

Encourages Member States to adopt effective measures to prevent and counter the serious problem of crimes that have an impact on the environment, such as illicit trafficking in wildlife and wildlife products, including fauna and flora as protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora,1 and poaching;

Urges Member States to take decisive steps at the national level to prevent, combat and eradicate the illegal trade in wildlife, on both the supply and the demand sides, including by strengthening their legislation and regulations necessary for the prevention, investigation, prosecution and appropriate punishment of such illegal trade, as well as by strengthening enforcement and criminal justice responses, and to increase the exchange of information and knowledge among national authorities as well as among Member States and international crime authorities, in accordance with national legislation and international law, acknowledging that the International Consortium on Combating Wildlife Crime can provide valuable technical assistance in this regard, including through supporting Member States in the implementation of the Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit, which is aimed at strengthening, where appropriate, the capacity of relevant law enforcement authorities and judiciaries in investigating, prosecuting and adjudicating wildlife-related offences;

Calls upon Member States to make illicit trafficking in protected species of wild fauna and flora a serious crime, in accordance with their national legislation and as defined in article 2 (b) and article 3, paragraph 1 (b), of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime,6 in order to ensure that, where the offence is transnational in nature and involves an organized criminal group, effective international cooperation can be afforded under the Convention to prevent and combat transnational organized crime;

Encourages Member States to utilize article II, paragraph 3, of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora by listing in its appendix III protected species in their jurisdiction that may become threatened as a result of international trade, and urges Member States to provide assistance in controlling the trade in those species protected under the Convention, including those listed in appendix III;

Calls upon Member States to review and amend national legislation, as necessary and appropriate, so that offences connected to the illegal trade in wildlife are treated as predicate offences, as defined in the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, for the purposes of domestic money-laundering offences and are actionable under domestic proceeds of crime legislation, and so that assets linked to illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products can be seized, confiscated and disposed of;

Encourages Member States to make use, to the greatest extent possible, of legal instruments available at the national level to tackle illicit trafficking in wildlife, including through legislation related to money-laundering, corruption, fraud, racketeering and financial crime;

Also encourages Member States to harmonize their judicial, legal and administrative regulations to support the exchange of evidence regarding and criminal prosecution of illicit trafficking in wildlife, as well as to establish national-level inter-agency wildlife crime task forces and facilitate the exchange of evidence between the different government agencies, to the extent consistent with national legislation;

Further encourages Member States to enhance their enforcement efforts, including through recording and monitoring both seizures and successful prosecutions, in order to more effectively counter and deter the illegal trade in wildlife;

Urges Member States to engage actively in efforts to raise awareness about and address the problems and risks associated with the supply and transit of and demand for illegal wildlife products, including by improving cooperation with all relevant stakeholders, engaging consumer groups and tackling the drivers of demand, and to more effectively reduce the demand, including by using targeted and evidence-based strategies in order to influence consumer behaviour and create greater awareness of laws prohibiting illegal trade in wildlife and associated penalties;

Invites Member States to enhance the ability of developing countries to tackle illicit trafficking in wildlife, and in particular to enhance their implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, by, inter alia, providing financial or technical assistance, supporting efforts to access funding through the Global Environment Facility and providing financial and in-kind resources for capacity-building activities required in this regard, including in the implementation of the resolutions and decisions adopted at the seventeenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention;

Encourages Member States to promote sustainable development in its three dimensions in an innovative, coordinated, environmentally sound, open and shared manner, which requires a comprehensive approach to protect wild fauna and flora and to combat, with determination, the illegal trade in wildlife and wildlife products;

Also encourages Member States to increase the capacity of local communities to pursue sustainable livelihood opportunities, including from their local wildlife resources, and eradicate poverty, by promoting, inter alia, innovative partnerships for conserving wildlife through shared management responsibilities, including community conservancies, public-private partnerships, sustainable tourism, revenue-sharing agreements and other income sources, such as sustainable agriculture;

Further encourages Member States to integrate measures to address illegal trade in wildlife into development policy and planning and the programming of development cooperation activities, and to further raise public awareness among individuals and communities to live sustainably in a world in which wildlife and other living species are protected;

Calls upon Member States to initiate or strengthen collaborative partnerships among local, regional, national and international development and conservation agencies so as to enhance support for community-led wildlife conservation and to promote the retention of benefits by local communities for the conservation and sustainable management of wildlife;

Strongly encourages Member States to enhance their support, including through transnational and regional cooperation, for the development of sustainable and, as appropriate, alternative livelihoods for communities affected by illicit trafficking in wildlife and its adverse impacts, with the full engagement of the communities in and adjacent to wildlife habitats as active partners in conservation and sustainable use, enhancing the rights and capacity of the members of such communities to manage and benefit from wildlife and wilderness;

Also strongly encourages Member States to participate in global, regional and national donor coordination and knowledge-sharing efforts to enhance understanding and mobilization of bilateral, multilateral and private investments to prevent and combat illegal trade in wildlife in order to collectively maximize investment effectiveness and engage new partners;

Urges Member States that have not yet done so to consider taking measures to ratify or accede to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the United Nations Convention against Corruption,7 and calls upon parties to take appropriate measures to ensure the effective implementation of their obligations under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and other relevant multilateral agreements, including by applying the agreed international guidelines established by the latter Convention for the storage, stockpiling and disposal of illicit wildlife products and contraband, as well as to consider ways to share information with one another on best practices to tackle illicit trafficking in wildlife in line with those instruments;

Calls upon Member States to prohibit, prevent and counter any form of corruption that facilitates illicit trafficking in wildlife and wildlife products, including by assessing and mitigating corruption risks in their technical assistance and capacity-building programmes related to wildlife, by strengthening their capacity to investigate and by prosecuting such corruption, calls upon parties to implement all relevant resolutions and decisions adopted at the seventeenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and requests the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to continue to support Member States in this regard, upon their request;

Also calls upon Member States to ensure that legal domestic markets for wildlife products are not used to mask the trade in illegal wildlife products, and in this regard urges parties to implement the decision adopted at the seventeenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora recommending that all Governments close legal domestic ivory markets, as a matter of urgency, if these markets contribute to poaching or illegal trade;

Encourages Member States to take measures making permit systems more resilient to corruption and to take advantage of modern information and communications technologies for improved control of international trade in protected species of wild fauna and flora in order to prevent the use of fraudulent documents in the international trade in protected species;

Recognizes the efforts of the Group of 20 in countering corruption at both the global and the national levels, takes note with appreciation of the work at its summits held in Hangzhou, China, in 2016, and in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, as well as its development of High-level Principles on Combatting Corruption Related to Illegal Trade in Wildlife and Wildlife Products, and urges the Group to continue to engage other States Members of the United Nations and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in its work in an inclusive and transparent manner;

Also recognizes the efforts of the African Union to prevent and reduce, with a view to eliminating, the illegal exploitation of and illegal trade in wild fauna and flora in Africa in a common coordinated response;

Strongly encourages Member States, in line with Economic and Social Council resolution 2013/40, to cooperate at the bilateral, regional and international levels to prevent, combat and eradicate international illicit trafficking in wildlife and wildlife products through, inter alia, the use of international legal instruments such as the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the United Nations Convention against Corruption;

Encourages Member States, where relevant and appropriate, to enhance cooperation for the timely and cost-efficient repatriation of live illegally traded wildlife, including eggs, consistent with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, and also, where relevant and appropriate, to enhance information-sharing among national and international authorities on the seizure of illegally traded wildlife and wildlife products in order to facilitate follow-up investigation and prosecution;

Calls upon United Nations organizations, within their respective mandates and in line with Economic and Social Council resolution 2013/40, to continue to support efforts by Member States to fight illicit trafficking in wildlife, such as through capacity-building and by supporting alternative livelihoods, and to improve cooperation with all relevant stakeholders in order to facilitate a holistic and comprehensive approach by the international community;

Requests, in this regard, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, within its mandate and resources, in line with Economic and Social Council resolution 2013/40 and in close cooperation and collaboration with Member States, to continue and to strengthen the collection of information on patterns and flows of illicit trafficking in wildlife and to report thereon biennially;

Requests the Secretary-General to further improve the coordination of activities undertaken by the specialized agencies, funds and programmes of the United Nations system relating to the scope of the present resolution, within their respective mandates and in line with Economic and Social Council resolution 2013/40;

Also requests the Secretary-General, taking into account Economic and Social Council resolution 2013/40, to report to the General Assembly at its seventy-third session on the global status of illicit trafficking in wildlife, including poaching and illegal trade, and on the implementation of the present resolution, and to make proposals for possible future action, including consideration of the appointment of a special envoy to promote awareness and galvanize international action;

Decides to revisit the issue and the implementation of the present resolution on a biennial basis, beginning at its seventy-third session.

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Who created this mandate?

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What does this mandate say?

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