The AU pointed out that the research carried out by Small Arms Survey analyses the period from 2012 to 2017.

Across the continent, we have registered 140,000 deaths and homicides related to armed confrontations each year, one third of which are caused by the use of firearms,’ explained Matthias Nowak, researcher at Small Arms Survey, a centre linked to the High Studies and Development Institute in Geneva.

The ammunition deflected or stolen from national arsenals with insufficient security supplies many illegal weapons movements in West Africa’, said Nowak, who exposed the document at the AU headquarters, invited by the Commission.

In his opinion, traffickers are also supplied by artisanal production and the circulation of light weapons acquired by smuggling.

These devices cross borders to reach different audiences’ and ‘meet the needs of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine, Al Murabitun and Boko Haram’, he stressed.

The Libyan crisis, triggered by the fall of Muhamar Gaddafi in 2011, has played a key role in the trafficking and destabilization of the Sahel region since the early 1990s, the survey warned.