The Crime-Conflict Nexus: Integrating Organized Crime into Conflict Analysis

Organized criminal activities are a threat to international peace and security, and risk perpetuating conflict and undermining peace efforts and state sovereignty. The “crime-conflict nexus” poses a unique challenge to donors and international coalitions engaged in peacekeeping activities.

The Capstone workshop team's final report proposes ways to bridge the gap between crime and conflict in intervention planning, or to “crime proof” conflict assessment tools. The report proposes incorporating an organized crime lens into baseline conflict analysis in order to sharpen existing tools to better account for factors that: 1) aid in understanding the nature of organized criminal activities within the considered context; 2) help in the analysis of these criminal activities and organized criminal groups; and 3) suggest ways to take the “crime-conflict” nexus into consideration for intervention and programming activities.

The following five “patterns of interaction” between structural factors and organized criminal actors are introduced in the report: Criminalization of Governance; Criminalization of Economy; Spill-in Effect; Access to Instruments of Violence; and Criminalization of Peace. The report suggests that analysts use the aforementioned patterns of interaction in their attempts at disentangling the complicated sinews of the crime-conflict nexus, and includes case studies regarding conflict in Mali and Guatemala that help illustrate these interactions. The report ends with implications for programming that derived from the exercise of developing the patterns of interaction.