UNODC World Wildlife Crime Report
Definition
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime's flagship analysis of global wildlife trafficking, synthesising seizure data and market intelligence. First published in 2016, updated periodically.
- Publisher
- UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
- First edition
- 2016
- Data basis
- Seizure records and market intelligence from member states
- Scope
- Global, cross-species trafficking trends
Common questions
Who uses the report in practice?+
Policy makers, CITES enforcement bodies, and researchers cite it to justify resourcing and legislative priorities, and prosecutors sometimes reference its trend data to contextualise the scale of a seizure in sentencing submissions.
Does the report identify individual cases or defendants?+
No. It aggregates seizure and trade-flow statistics across countries and species to show patterns over time, rather than reporting on specific prosecutions or naming individuals.
Related terms
- Commodity Substitution
- The replacement of one trafficked species with another as enforcement tightens or consumer preferences shift. Pangolin scale volumes rose sharply as ivory...
- Conflict Wildlife
- Wildlife products, particularly ivory, traded by armed groups to finance military operations. Documented in central and East Africa, where poaching revenue has...
- Consumer Country
- A country where illegal wildlife products reach their final buyers. Consumer demand drives the entire supply chain upstream.
- Source Country
- A country where wild animals or plants are poached or collected illegally. Typically biodiversity-rich, with weak enforcement capacity relative to the value...
- Transit Country
- A country used to move, process, or repackage wildlife products between source and consumer markets. Often chosen for port geography, customs vulnerability,...