The fight against transnational organized crime, especially in countries affected by conflict and instability in the Global South, has become a priority for the international community. 'Combating all forms of organized crime' has also become enshrined in United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16.4., which Norway and other European countries work to attain globally through their foreign policies. The underlying assumption is that crime control responses are necessary, effective and adequate in bringing forth peace and security. However, the Criminalized Peace project calls this basic assumption into question and has scrutinized it empirically. The research results show that, conversely, the fight against transnational organized crime sometimes itself fuels armed conflict, violence, and instability, while illicit economies do not always lead to violence but can even have pacifying, stabilizing and developmental effects. Especially, the project has delved into how, when, and why transnational crime control sometimes supports and other times sabotages peace processes.
Through long in-depth fieldworks in the two conflict countries Colombia and Mali, the project has explored especially how, when, and why transnational crime control sometimes sabotages peace processes, yet other times offers an opportunity and pressure for negotiated settlement between warring parties. One project result is that violence and conflict dynamics around illicit economies are mediated through formal and informal agreements peace agreements between armed groups, states and international actors. Illicit economies and organized crime have therefore been topics directly negotiated in peace processes.
The Sustainable Development Goal 16.4. to ‘combat all forms of organized crime’ throughout the Global South is based on the key assumption that crime control responses are necessary, effective and adequate in bringing forth peace and security. However, this is an assumption that the project aims to challenge and further explore because the opposite seems often to be the case: control responses to fight transnational crime may themselves lead to more violence and instability. For example, police crackdowns and illicit crop destruction in places like Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan have led to more violence, insecurity and mass incarceration instead of more peace and security. In particular, wars on crime can undermine peace processes.
Therefore, the project will explore how and under what conditions the internationally-driven fight against transnational organized crime promotes or disrupts peace processes. As criminologists have not tended to research peace process contexts in the Global South while Peace & Conflict scholars have rarely studied crime and crime control responses, the project sets out to bridge this disciplinary gap which is crucial for fully understanding and conceptualising how transnational crime control influences peace processes. Theory, literature and methods from these disciplines will be combined to disentangle the empirical complexity whereby the fight against crime may influence peace: exploring through in-depth fieldwork the cases of Colombia and Mali – two countries where a) organized crime has been important for conflict dynamics and was included as a topic in the peace agreements between the governments and rebel groups; and b) international actors are highly involved in both shaping crime control responses and implementing peace agreements. Ultimately, the aim of project is to create the starting point of a broader research agenda that investigates the peace-furthering potential of transnational crime control.