SADC-TWIX: A TOOL TO FACILITATE INFORMATION EXCHANGE ON ILLEGAL WILDLIFE TRADE IN THE SADC REGION

National law enforcement agencies in SADC (Southern African Development Community) Member States play a crucial role in implementing legislation to support the implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The mandate for the establishment of a SADC-TWIX system emanates from the SADC Law Enforcement and Anti-Poaching Strategy (LEAP) that was approved in 2015 by Ministers responsible for Environment and Natural Resources and endorsed in 2017 by the Joint Committee of Ministers of Environment and Natural Resources and Ministers of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation.

The overall objective of the SADC LEAP Strategy is to significantly reduce the level of poaching and illegal trade in wild fauna and flora and enhance law enforcement capacity in the SADC Region. The LEAP strategy explicitly identifies the establishment of the SADC-TWIX system as one of its key deliverables.

The SADC-TWIX tool consists of two components: a secure mailing list enabling agencies engaged in the fight against illegal wildlife trade to communicate with one another in real time, as well as a website that holds useful resources, such as training materials, identification guides and a centralized database of wildlife seizures made by the participating SADC Member States.

The SADC-TWIX has been developed following the EU-TWIX (European Union Trade in Wildlife Information eXchange) and AFRICA-TWIX models. The EU-TWIX platform has been operating in Europe since 2005, while the AFRICA-TWIX platform has connected officials from the COMIFAC region (Commission des Forêts d’Afrique Centrale) since 2016.

The success of SADC-TWIX will largely depend on the regular input of information relating to new seizures and offences by national law enforcement agencies. The involvement of all designated enforcement officers in each participating Member State is therefore strongly encouraged.

SADC-TWIX is developed and managed by TRAFFIC on behalf of law enforcement agencies of SADC Member States.

The implementation of SADC-TWIX received financial support from the “Partnership against Poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade (Ivory and Rhino-Horn) in Africa and Asia”, implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), and WWF France.