Top West African officials are calling for greater United Nations and international support to prevent the region’s coasts from becoming a haven for pirates and to fight growing drug and arms trafficking

"Pirate" fishermen are roaming the seas along West Africa and looting marine treasure from some of the world's poorest countries

Although Guinea-Bissau has become more stable and made economic reforms, the UN Security Council is still concerned at persisting transnational organized crimes which threaten peace and security, said Nelson Messone, the council's president for the month of June

The drugs trade in West Africa is going the way of Mexico, with local players increasingly taking control of an ever more sophisticated system to smuggle cocaine into the rich market to the north, the UN said

Mali has charged a Malian, a Spaniard and a Frenchman with "international trafficking in cocaine" in connection with its investigation into a drug-loaded plane that landed in its desert north in 2009

The amount of cocaine trafficked through West Africa has been declining steadily over the past four years, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Global mafias are using corrupt nations in west Africa to run their syndicates and the area is now a ''hole in the wall'' in the international fight against organised crime, says the former head of Britain's top police unit

Five leading UK banks failed to adequately check funds they accepted from politicians accused of graft, watchdog says

Violence and incarceration for months or even years found on ships off coast of west Africa

Niger’s observance of Islam is not overly strict, but the preponderance of gin bottles on stalls lining its pitted roads is still a surprise