Ecoterra Reports on the UN / Kenya Conference on Piracy

Part of the 76th Press Release Update of the leading NGO Ecoterra concerns the 2-day conference that took place last week in Nairobi. I republish the integral excerpt – report on this critical event.

UN / Kenya Conference on Piracy

Piracy "poses an enormous challenge to the international legal system", UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, said already at Wednesday's opening of the conference.

The UN-backed international conference on piracy entered its second day in Nairobi on Thursday with participants decrying surge in piracy and calling on the world to curb the menace along the coast of Somalia. UN Special envoy for Somalia Ahmedou Ould Abdallah appealed to the international community to help stabilize the war-torn nation, saying piracy is a result of an almost nonfunctioning government in Somalia. The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General for Somalia told the over 140 participants attending the meeting that the threat of piracy cannot and should not be underestimated any more, noting that addressing the vice requires identifying and targeting the perpetrators and their associates. "Countries that can do so, should trace, track and freeze the assets of the backers of pirates. They deserve to be brought to justice and prevented from harming their country, its economy and reputation. Impunity and lack for human rights have no doubt encouraged piracy", said the envoy and expressed concern that the unprecedented rise in piracy was threatening the freedom and safety of maritime trade routes, affecting not only Somalia region but also a large percentage of world trade. He said the UN Security Council has adopted significant resolutions on the issue which calls upon states and regional organizations to take part actively in the fight against piracy and armed robbery at seas off the coast of Somalia.

In the keynote speech to the conference read on his behalf by Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka during the official opening of the ministerial session of the International Conference on Piracy off the Somali Coast in Nairobi, President Mwai Kibaki on Thursday called on political leaders in Somalia to play a more active role in ensuring that peace and stability are restored in the country. The President' statement said while the United Nations and the international community were committed to Somali's reconciliation efforts, it was up to the politicians in the country to put the interests of their people before those of their own. "If the major powers paid one-tenth of their responsibility to Somalia, compared to the 100 per cent paid to Iraq, Afghanistan or the former Yugoslavia ... we wouldn't be here today", Vice-President Musyoko read from Kinbaki's statement.

Piracy in Somali has its roots in the early 1990s, when illegal fishing trawlers and ships dumping toxic waste took advantage of the collapse of the regime of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 to target Somali waters. Fishermen began seizing the foreign ships, saying they were defending their coastline. Now piracy in Somalia has morphed into a multimillion-dollar industry, with gunmen commanding huge ransoms for the ships they seize. President Kibaki' statement elaborated that continued lawlessness and insecurity in the country, which in turn had led to piracy in the territorial waters, disrupting trade and other humanitarian activities in the region, as well as raising the cost of commodities. The head of state described the criminal activities in the territorial waters off Somalia and the Gulf of Aden as grave and worrying, adding that they needed the concerted efforts of the international community to eradicate. "The audacious attacks, increasing numbers of attempted hijackings, the range of operations and the capacity demonstrated by the pirates is very worrying", he said, adding the crime had hindered the safe delivery of humanitarian assistance to millions of desperate people. The President appealed to the UN to deploy peacekeeping troops to bolster the efforts of the AU mission in Somalia. At the same time the statement reaffirmed that Kenya did not approve the payment of ransoms to the pirates. "The ransoms paid perpetuate the crime thereby exacerbating the fragile security situation. Ransoms undermine our regional and international efforts to bring peace to Somalia", he pointed out. He said the country has taken several measures towards complementing international efforts in combating piracy citing the signing of pacts and initiation of various legislations. "As part of these efforts, my government has established the National Counter Terrorism Unit" he added. The President commended various international players for their continued support to the anti-piracy efforts.

Over 140 delegates from 45 countries - including ministers, ambassadors and technical experts - had gathered in the Kenyan capital to look at how to increase cooperation in fighting Somali pirates, in particular the thorny legal aspects of the issue. A communique issued at the end of the two-day gathering in Nairobi, Kenya, stressed "the importance of enhancing coordination and cooperation in the fight against piracy". Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, in a statement read out at the start of the conference, called for UN peacekeepers to be deployed to help an undermanned and overwhelmed African Union force. "Somalia has been abandoned by the whole world", the statement said. "It is high time (the world) examines its conscience and comes to rescue Somalia now".

India pointed out that Somali pirates were a threat to Indian ships and seafarers in the Gulf of Eden. Though no ship carrying the Indian flag had been hijacked, several Indian seafarers were affected in many of the hijackings. The problem could not be tackled by individual countries. Hence the Indian government was pressing the United Nations for a unified command so that the navies of different countries could make a joint effort to snuff out sea piracy.

While all speakers stressed the importance of solving Somalia's problems ashore, some participants said there was little evidence the world was ready to stabilise the country. "We are not seeing major changes... and everybody is failing to acknowledge the resentment that these naval missions are creating on the ground", said one diplomat, according to AFP. The European Union this week launched its first naval mission - Operation Atalanta - with significant French and Spanish participation and its ships joining an existing US-led coalition, but experts argue the area is too large to cover for a few dozen naval vessels with diverse interests. Several participants pointed out that the cost of the EU naval force - estimated at 250 million euros (320 million dollars) - was four or five times the EU's annual aid budget for Somalia. In addition, the head of East African Seafarers Assistance Programme, Mr. Andrew Mwangura said the clampdown was unlikely to work until the "root cause" of the problem -- the poverty of chaotic Somalia, which has had no effective government since 1991 -- was addressed. "The young men are poor", he said. "The real pirates are the sharks outside of Somalia, and these are the ones that take big money." While naval efforts to contain the problem are useful, more should be done on land to ease the problems, he said. "The presence is good, but we should do something diplomatically, politically", Mwangura said. "Talk to the people, the common people".

France and Spain, who are the most interested in the tuna-rich Indian ocean fisheries, had earlier called for the creation of an international maritime police force and were seeking an endorsement from the UN and the European Union, but many felt that this would be like making the goat the gardener. An earlier workshop in November on Piracy off the Somali Coast, commissioned by the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN to Somalia, found:

The number of foreign boats fishing illegally off the coast of southern Somalia is reported to be still increasing and includes fishing boats with the following flags: Belize (either French or Spanish-owned purse-seiners operating under flag of convenience to avoid EU regulations); France (purse seiners targeting tuna); Honduras (EU purse seiners targeting tuna operating under flag of convenience); Kenya (Mombasa-based trawlers); Korea (longliners targeting swordfish seasonally); Pakistan (trawlers, but also targeting shark); Saudi Arabia (trawlers); Spain (purse seiners targeting tuna); Taiwan (longliners targeting swordfish seasonally); and Yemen (trawlers).

What the UN-expert group - for whatever reason - did not yet list is China with longliners and Japan with tuna-hunting fleets consisting of factory-ships and sophisticated tuna-hunter-vessels equipped with satellite technology to follow the shoals.

Former colonial powers Britain, France and Italy as well as Greece, Germany, and Turkey, the United States, India, Malaysia as well as Russia have naval ships patrolling the waters off Somalia, founding their legality of operations on the UN Security Council resolutions, but they have miserably failed to arrest a single illegally fishing foreign vessel.

Now under consideration, to complement international mobilisation to patrol the high seas and regional cooperation among the states affected, is again the idea to create proper coastguard schools to train young Somali men considering becoming fishermen and not to leave such to individual private companies or locally governed (illegal) fishing-licence-scams, whose later abandoned guards became hostage takers.

Mr. Andrew Mwangura, the head of the Kenyan branch of the East African Seafarers' Association, who participated in the conference, already had called during a press-conference on Tuesday for dialogue with the pirates and local communities to address their grievances. While delegates at the conference said that the insecurity in Somalia had to be addressed, calls for dialogue with the young gunmen were at first rejected. "These other things like illegal fishing and toxic dumping need to be addressed, but it is no excuse for the behaviour of these gangsters", German Ambassador to Kenya Walter Lindner told Deutsche Presse-Agentur. What the German Ambassador still and many at the conference first seem to not have understood is that the ending of the persistent criminal activities in Somali waters like illegal fishing by foreign fleets and dumping, which likewise are organized but in many cases at least not investigated crimes committed especially from European and Far-East countries, is a prerequisite to end crime and injustice in Somalia - and to first and foremost make it also clear to the Somalis as a whole and the world that the international assistance-operations against piracy in Somalia come with their own hands being clean and with the honest intend to make Somalia a better place for its people and not just to provide for a training field of naval forces and commandos.

Though curbing illegal fishing by foreign fleets and bringing a lasting end to illegal dumping practices surely is not the tool to stop the true masterminds and syndicates of internationally organized crime which have the young pirate-gangs in their grip, to just leave Somalia' underlying problems unattended and not to take serious steps to uproot the true culprits will only have piracy to continue. That the issues are more complex, the members of the German delegation could at least also learn from the fact that the conference's legal workshop, which was led by a German representative, remained the only working group of the conference, which could not provide the ministerial level session with a single draft resolution for solutions to the existing legal tussles to be deliberated and concluded.

The most important conclusions approved by the ministerial session deriving from the other three expert meetings therefore are:

To secure coastal waters for the recovery of the Somali fishing community / industry. Support Somalia to establish an effective police and coastguard to provide adequate law enforcement capacity to deal with piracy, human trafficking, illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste.

Establish a task force of UN/international community/Somali representation to identify and investigate the issues at the local community level including local complaints with regard to economic, security concerns and the illegal exploitation of Somali maritime resources including human and arms trafficking, toxic waste dumping and illegal fishing.

Most governments understood during the meeting that of course the sole and brute military force alone is not the solution and will only solve the problem temporarily, if at all. It is not enough what is presently in the international anti-piracy folder, and only to take an interactive look at modern piracy and the defences that ships use to avoid attacks is unsatisfactory. Cracking down on piracy and crime is indeed a must, however logic demands that the thousands of unemployed and aimless youth in the Horn of Africa be offered a way out of their misery. What is needed is a mini-Marshall plan to help develop the region and to offer Somalis a viable alternative to joining marauding gangs of criminals, be they on land or at sea.

"The Somali interim government lacks control capabilities for the struggle against piracy due to the ongoing civil war. Therefore, we appeal to all countries, private companies and civil society to cooperate. Specifically, we appeal to Russia to give technical assistance in the struggle with piracy, poaching and arms smuggling", one diplomat said. "The restoration of the coast guard fleet is being given priority, as Somalia has no warship now", he said. "We hope Russia will assign additional warships not only for the struggle with piracy, but also within the scope of military-technical co-operation with Somalia and other countries in the region", he said. "However, any deployment of an international mission to control pirates should be based on UN Security Council resolutions", he said. The text stipulates that Somalia's transitional government would need to give its consent. It was, however, not clear what form that Somali consent would take in the present political turmoil in the country.

In a joint communiqué issued at the end of the two-day meeting, the 145 delegates from 45 countries, including ministers and ambassadors admitted that piracy cannot be effectively tackled in Somalia without the return of peace, stability and a functioning government. "Somali leaders who impede the stabilization of their country creating conditions to breed and escalate piracy will be individually and collectively placed under sanctions by the African Union and IGAD and also in accordance to U.N. Security Council resolution 1844 (2008)", they said.

The meeting highlighted the importance of strengthening the capacity of Somali national as well as regional authorities in combating the menace, both to interdict pirates at sea, and to take effective legal action against pirates once returned to shore. Providing a broader agreement between coalition countries and coastal nations such as Kenya, Tanzania, Djibouti and Yemen is one of the main proposals on the agenda at the Nairobi conference.

The international community is looking already at the upcoming Djibouti conference in January next year to make some headway in tackling the rampant piracy in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia under IMO guidance, with the hope of forming a UN-led anti-piracy naval force. The Arab League of nations are also likely to meet in January over their concern to a disruption of important oil-trading routes due to piracy.

Note
Picture: Piracy is not a natural phenomenon of the Somali History.