Combat Wildlife Trafficking in Bangladesh

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Wildlife trafficking is a lucrative form of transnational organized crime (TOC) that has decimated populations of species, such as elephants, rhinos, pangolins, and more. Wildlife trafficking fuels corruption; threatens the rule of law, peace, and security; spreads disease; and destabilizes communities that depend on wildlife for biodiversity and eco-tourism revenues. Criminal organizations are profiting from this illicit trade, relying on their ability to exploit porous borders and weak institutions, and leveraging multilevel illicit networks of criminal intermediaries and government officials to move illegal wildlife from source to demand countries. INL aims to combat wildlife trafficking (CWT) through effective programming at the national, regional, and international levels. For this funding opportunity, INL intends to focus on Bangladesh. Bangladesh not only maintains significant wild populations of high-value wildlife (e.g., big cats, bears, pangolins, and more), but also sits at the crossroads between source countries in South Asia and the demand countries of China and Southeast Asia. While a significant quantity of illegal wildlife products transit Bangladesh’s land borders, Dhaka’s international airport is also a major transit point, along with seaports and key waterways across the country. To further compound the situation, Bangladesh’s justice sector maintains low institutional capacity, lack of detection equipment, and insufficient data exchange among law enforcement agencies. Therefore, this program will aim to tackle each of these three challenges. The ultimate goal of this program is to increase Bangladesh’s desire and ability to CWT and disrupt the criminal organizations that perpetrate this heinous crime. 1.     Priority Countries Bangladesh 2.     Project Goals The goal of this program is to improve Bangladesh’s will and capacity to investigate, arrest, prosecute, convict, and sentence to the fullest extent of the law the perpetrators of wildlife crime. To achieve this goal, INL seeks to fund programs that will provide: 1.     Investigation, surveillance, and monitoring equipment to law enforcement, customs, border, and port authorities; 2.     Training on the use of this equipment and how it can further investigations; and 3.     Capacity building training to strengthen the interdiction and investigative capabilities of law enforcement agencies.

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