Shipping body urges Africa to cooperate fighting piracy

By Kai Portmann Apr 29, 2010, 16:59 GMT

   Singapore - A leading shipping industry body Thursday urged Somalia and other African countries to cooperate in fighting piracy off their shores, noting that multilateral efforts in Asia had restored security for merchant ships in the region.

   'We know the problems in the Gulf of Aden and in the Indian Ocean can be solved because anti-piracy multilateral initiatives have worked in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore,' said Robert Lorenz-Meyer, president of the Baltic and International Maritime Council.

   Lorenz-Meyer, head of a global group of 2,720 shipping companies, was speaking at an anti-piracy conference in Singapore, organized by the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery (RECAAP).

   Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand had set the stage for cooperation between states, both in terms of information exchange and mobilization of resources, he said.

   RECAAP's assistant director for research Lee Yin Mui gave the case of the hijacked Singaporean tugboat Asta as an example of effective cooperation in fighting piracy.

   The tug was hijacked by pirates on February 6 off Malaysia's Tioman island and recovered three weeks later in the southern Philippines, due to 'good inter-agency coordination' in the region, she said.

   The pirates had been arrested, and all 12 crew members rescued, Lee said.

   In contrast, not all states bordering the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean had the capacity to provide protection for merchant ships, nor were they collating information, Lorenz-Meyer said.

   While the situation might not be exactly the same, 'this cannot be used as an excuse for failure,' he said.

   Asian countries were even contributing to the multinational naval presence off Africa's shores, Lorenz-Meyer said. 'Many wonder how countries in the closer proximity of this area can remain less engaged than those far away.'

   'As the waters of Asia became safer, the situation off Somalia as well off the West Coast of Africa worsened,' he said.

   In the first quarter of 2010, 20 actual and five attempted incidents of piracy and armed robbery were registered in Asia, up from 14 and one in the same period a year ago, respectively, according to RECAAP's Singapore-based Information Sharing Centre.

   However, it said, the overall rise could be attributed to an increase of low-level attacks mainly against ships at ports and anchorages in Indonesia, which rose to 17 in the first quarter, up from nine a year earlier.

   The London-based International Maritime Bureau said earlier the number of piracy incidents worldwide dropped in the first quarter of 2010, but it warned that Somali pirates were widening the scope of their attacks.

   From January to March, 18 pirate attacks were reported off Somalia, the highest number worldwide, followed by the Gulf of Aden with 12 cases.

   'Governments of the world must get their act together,' Lorenz-Meyer said, adding that adequate national legislation was needed to prosecute pirates.

   'Continuing a catch-and-release approach will not solve this problem,' he said, 'We must see this change to catch-and-prosecute.'

   Pursuit, arrest, prosecution and punishment had to be part of the solution, he said, because 'If there are no consequences for the pirates, they will continue to attack ships.'

   However, some anti-piracy tools remained still out of reach due to regulatory limitations, Lorenz-Meyer said. For example, Interpol databases to identify pirates were still only available to police officers.

   'We hope that one solution that could be instrumental in arresting pirates, namely the placement of police officers on the patrolling naval ships, will in the not so distant future result in more arrests and fewer cases of catch and release,' he said.