The Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have announced their new partnership around United for Wildlife, the flagship programme to end the illegal wildlife trade. The UNODC will be supported in this effort by DP World, long-standing advocates for increased action in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade (IWT).  

The new three-year agreement, coming into force on 1st August, will see The Royal Foundation and UNODC combine their resources and expertise in the global fight against the IWT, which is worth up to $20 billion annually and is associated with violent crime, corruption, and other forms of trafficking. This high-level collaboration underlines the global nature of the threat posed by the IWT, which robs the planet of its most precious natural resources and funds organised crime, directly affecting already vulnerable communities.  

United for Wildlife was founded by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in 2014 to end the illegal wildlife trade. It fosters collaboration across the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors to increase the identification and investigation of wildlife crime, aiming to make it impossible for traffickers to exploit any vulnerabilities in global transport and financial systems. 

In fusing United for Wildlife’s private sector and NGO partnerships with UNODC’s global network of wildlife crime advisers and relationships with global law enforcement entities and national governments, the partnership will scale the programme’s collective ability to enable the detection and disruption of this harmful trade.  

UNODC officers and objectives focused on United for Wildlife will be integrated into key UNODC programmes, working to expand United for Wildlife’s visibility, membership, and regional coverage. Officers will be based in Southern Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The partnership will increase much-needed law enforcement engagement in fighting criminal syndicates behind the global wildlife trade and aims to tackle the high-level corruption that often facilitates wildlife trafficking. It will also encourage cross-sector collaboration and information-sharing to support seizures, investigations and arrests relating to IWT.

In the six years since creating its international transport and financial taskforces, the United for Wildlife network has contributed to over 500 law enforcement cases, over 400 arrests, nearly 300 seizures of wildlife products and has trained over 100,000 people. The network spans the globe – from Southeast Asia to South America, Europe to East Africa – increasing deterrents across the entire chain of demand and supply.