safety piracy
Navies are stretched and there are competing demands for their services
Industry could do more to help counter piracy
T
here is good news in the war on piracy. While Somali pirates were more active in the first six months of the year, initiating
163 attacks versus the 100 launched in the first six months of 2010 according to figures collated by the International Maritime Bureau which tracks these attacks, they managed to hijack 21 vessels in the first half of this year compared with 27 over the same period last year. “The industry should take huge credit for
this,” said EU Navfor chief of staff Captain Keith Blount, speaking at the International Chamber of Shipping International Conference in September. “The industry has been very successful in routing ships further and further east to keep them out of harm’s way. And where there are no ships the pirates will not operate.” There are also signs that the political resolve
at the highest levels is hardening. At the most senior levels of the political and military spheres the option of taking pirates out at source, that is to say when they set up their base camps on the beaches, is being debated, according to Captain Blount. “The challenge is ensuring we remain vigilant and maintain a coherent approach.” Another challenge is ‘force flow’ or the number
of ships available to world navies to do the job. “The military is not losing interest. The military likes counter-piracy as a mission, it is a proper maritime mission and it allows sailors to do what
30 I Tanker Shipping & Trade I October/November 2011
Tanker owners have invested heavily in anti-piracy measures. However, an overstretched military believes that the industry at large could do more to help
they joined their navy to do. Pretty much every nation in Europe recently has gone through its own strategic defence review and there have only been reductions, all against the backdrop of conflicting priorities with other real military activity. Industry and the military involved in counter-piracy need to lobby government and try to encourage them to see piracy as a higher priority than it is.” Vessels that are deployed to this particular
conflict also find they spend a lot of time escorting World Food Programme ships. “We are proud of the fact that 1 million Somalians are fed every day with the food aid protected by EU ships. That 1 million is about to increase to 6 million, and that will mean that our ships will be spending more time on this mission.” To Capt Blount’s mind there is a workable
solution: vessel protection detachments (VPDs). “My aspiration, and that of my admiral, is to make sure we use VPDs as widely as we can. If I have a VPD on a ship I can take the frigate that
was escorting it and deploy it on counter-piracy. The reason I can’t use VPDs more widely is that many of the larger flag states will not allow them. We need to lobby those nations to allow it. It would free tremendous military flexibility to go and do the work that I am sure you and the world would like the military to get on and do.” If changing attitudes towards armed guards
are a barometer, there is no reason to imagine that such a sea change will not happen in time. While IMO stresses that the use of armed guards on board ships is not an alternative to best management practice, they are almost domino- like being sanctioned by the authorities. While for now providing some relief (no vessel with armed guards has, to date, been successfully hijacked), their use introduces a set of new challenges. One school of thought is that by employing
armed guards the industry is allowing governments to abdicate their responsibility. In the wake of an independent report
recommending the Netherlands Government to provide Dutch shipowners with better levels of protection against piracy, including the hiring of armed guards, Dutch law firm AKD says that shipowners who directly hire armed personnel themselves could face criminal prosecution. The so-called De Wijckerslooth Committee
report was designed to assess the desirability and possibility of deploying private sector armed
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