Mark

Micallef

Mark Micallef is a researcher specialised on smuggling and trafficking networks in Libya and the Sahel and an investigative journalist by background. He is a Senior Fellow at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, where he leads research on organized crime based on ground networks established in in Libya, Niger, Chad and Mali southern Algeria and Sudan.

His primary specialisation is human smuggling and trafficking. In this area, he has been engaged with migration from Africa to Europe for over ten years as a journalist and has reported extensively from Libya both before and after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddaf as well as during the 2011 revolution itself with dispatches from Benghazi, Ajdabija and Ras Lanuf during the rebels’ advance on Sirte, where Gaddafi was eventually found and killed. Since then he has conducted extensive fieldwork and research organised crime, non-state armed groups, and smuggling and trafficking networks in Libya, Niger, Chad, Mali, Algeria, Sudan, Turkey, Myanmar and Bangladesh.