Beyond CITES: Legal Fragmentation, Criminalisation Gaps and the Political Economy of Transnational Wildlife Trafficking

@article{1722926,
      author = {Parveen Kumar},
      title = {Beyond CITES: Legal Fragmentation, Criminalisation Gaps and the Political Economy of Transnational Wildlife Trafficking},
      journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
      year = {2025},
      volume = {8},
      number = {7},
      pages = {954-961},
      issn = {2456-8880},
      url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1722926.pdf},
      abstract = {Wildlife trafficking is no longer adequately described as a conservation problem alone. It is a transnational criminal market involving illegal extraction, transport, document fraud, corruption, financial concealment, digital commerce and destination-market demand. This systematic legal literature review examines whether the international legal architecture is capable of treating that activity as serious organised crime. The review combines doctrinal analysis of CITES, UNTOC and UNCAC with thematic synthesis of peer-reviewed scholarship and authoritative institutional material. It finds that the principal weakness is not an absolute absence of international rules, but a failure of legal interoperability. CITES regulates international trade but does not constitute a comprehensive criminal code; UNTOC offers powerful cooperation mechanisms but operates through its serious-crime and transnational-organised-crime conditions; and UNCAC addresses corruption without creating a wildlife-trafficking offence. National differences in offences, penalties, conspiracy, corporate liability, confiscation, financial investigation and digital evidence consequently permit regulatory arbitrage. The review further finds that profit incentives become especially powerful where detection is uncertain and punishment is weak or uneven. Corruption and institutional influence can reduce enforcement risk, although claims of deliberate political sponsorship must remain tied to evidence from particular cases. The article argues for a dedicated UNTOC wildlife-trafficking protocol or equivalent binding instrument, common criminalisation standards, serious and proportionate penalties, mandatory financial investigation, stronger asset recovery, cross-border digital-evidence mechanisms, corporate accountability and whole-of-supply-chain responsibility. The contribution is to connect legal fragmentation with the political economy of trafficking and to show why seizure-based enforcement alone cannot dismantle networked criminal enterprises.},
      keywords = {wildlife trafficking; illegal wildlife trade; CITES; UNTOC; UNCAC; organised crime; corruption; criminalisation; political economy; asset recovery; legal harmonisation.},
      month = {January},
  }