The first regional agreement between Arab and African countries on
combating piracy has been signed in Djibouti at a special meeting
organized by the International Maritime Organization. The agreement resembles another multinational regional deal
struck in 2005 to fight piracy in Southeast Asia.
Nine countries
in the region affected by piracy - Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Madagascar, the Maldives, the Seychelles, Somalia, Tanzania, and Yemen
- signed an agreement Thursday to cooperate in preventing ship
hijackings and apprehending suspected pirates for arrest and
prosecution.
The Djibouti Code of Conduct - as the agreement
is referred to - allows one signatory country to send armed forces into
another signatory country's territorial waters to pursue pirates and,
in some cases, to jointly conduct anti-piracy operations. The nations
have also agreed on the creation of piracy information centers to be
set up in Kenya, Tanzania, and Yemen, and an anti-piracy military
training center to be established in Djibouti.
The Code of
Conduct calls on member states to enact new laws or change existing
legislation to facilitate the arrest and prosecution of suspected
pirates. The regional coordinator of the International Maritime
Organization, John Muindi, says a temporary solution has been suggested
to give governments time to act.
"If there is one country
without relevant laws, then the one with [relevant laws] can
prosecute. But the IMO is insisting the countries come up with their
own legislation," he explained.
In developing a mechanism to fight piracy in
the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, the IMO followed the model of
another regional government-to-government anti-piracy agreement, which
went into effect almost three years ago.
The agreement, called
the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed
Robbery against Ships in Asia, has more than a dozen signatories and is
credited with helping reduce the number of successful pirate attacks in
the Malacca Straits.
The IMO says the sharing of piracy-related
information through the Singapore-based Information Sharing Center is a
good example of successful regional cooperation that could be easily
replicated.
But according to reports from the International
Maritime Bureau, the piracy problem in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of
Aden has grown far larger and more complicated than in Asia.
Last
year, pirates attacked more than 110 vessels off the coast of Somalia,
successfully hijacking 42 ships and crew, including an oil-laden
supertanker and a freighter loaded with Russian tanks and other arms.
The United Nations estimates that pirates also earned more than $100
million in ransom money, driving up shipping and insurance costs to
record levels.
The worsening situation has prompted more than
a dozen countries, including the United States, China, Russia, India,
Iran and countries in the European Union, to send warships to patrol
the region. But the intervention has had limited success because there
are no international laws or treaties that can be used to determine the
fate of pirates arrested by foreign navies outside of Somali waters.
The
Djibouti Code of Conduct is viewed as one of the first steps toward
finding a way to transfer pirates to stand trial in a near-by country.
