UN Maritime Agency to Repress Somalian Piracy
New York, Nov 2 2009 3:10PM
The head of the United Nations International Maritime Organization (http://www.imo.org/) has pledged that his agency will help Somalia repress piracy off its coast and in the Gulf of Aden, including through assisting in the creation of a national coast guard.
IMO Secretary-General Efthimios Mitropoulos
discussed the issue with the Prime Minister of Somalia’s
Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Omar Abdirashid
Sharmarke, during their meeting last week in London, where
the agency is based.
The past year has witnessed an
upsurge in piracy off the coast of the Horn of Africa
nation, which has been riven by factional fighting and had
not had a functioning central government since the overthrow
of Siad Barre in 1991.
In January, Indian Ocean and
Red Sea countries pledged to cooperate in seizing,
investigating and prosecuting pirates off the Somali coast
in a stepped-up campaign to curb a scourge that has wrought
havoc with international shipping, including UN delivery of
emergency food aid.
The code of conduct, signed in
Djibouti, calls for shared operations, such as nominating
law enforcement or other authorized officials to embark in
the patrol ships or aircraft of another signatory.
Mr. Mitropoulos emphasized the importance of putting
the code of conduct – of which Somalia is a signatory –
into effect.
The Prime Minister said that piracy off
his country’s coast needed to be tackled from the land side as well as from
the sea, and requested help to halt attacks from the two
main piracy networks (one in the central region of Somalia
and one in Puntland) through the establishment of
information-sharing centres.
He also stated that the
country is reviewing its national legislation to ensure that
pirates are prosecuted within Somalia, and requested the
IMO’s help in this regard.
Mr. Mitropoulos said that
the IMO, in cooperation with the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime (http://www.unodc.org/), will provide the requested
assistance. In addition, it will, through its technical
cooperation programme and assistance from Member States,
help Somalia to establish a national coast
guard.
ENDS