New Danish anti-piracy strategy
SHIPPING: The Danish government has launched a new Danish strategy for measures against piracy. The strategy follows up on the existing multi-facetted Danish efforts made and creates a coherent, multi-annual framework for the Danish measures against piracy.
I am extremely pleased to present the government’s new strategy for measures against piracy today. Piracy is an increasing problem that affects, not least, Danish shipping. Today, we launch a broad-spectred policy placing our efforts in an international context and containing both political measures, the dispatch of military forces, legal measures and capacity-building in the region. It is an ambitious strategy aimed at a complex problem. We have been among those in lead of the international efforts made right from the start, and we must remain so”, says Foreign Minister Lene Espersen.
The overall purpose of the Danish efforts is to contribute to making the waters off the Horn of Africa and in the Indian Ocean safe and navigable for Danish and international shipping. The strategy covers bilateral as well as multilateral political, military, legal and capacity-building measures.
The considerable piracy activities off the coast of Somalia and far into the Indian Ocean have great personal costs for the persons held hostage and their relatives. Also the persons carrying out their work on board the ships passing through the area are affected. In addition, piracy has had a considerable negative impact on global commercial shipping and trade, not least for the African countries that experience decreasing trade and increasing commodity prices.
For a maritime nation as Denmark, accounting for about ten per cent of global transport on the oceans measured in value, piracy is a noticeable problem that must be solved through international cooperation. For several years, Denmark has been engaged in combating the piracy problem through, inter alia, the dispatching of naval forces to NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield and the Danish chairmanship of the international legal working group on piracy. The new strategy aims to extend this involvement.
The strategy focuses, inter alia, on Denmark’s contribution to:
• furthering international coordination and focus on the combating of piracy as well as strengthening regional and bilateral cooperation on the combating of piracy,
• combating piracy through increased Danish naval and air force activities until 2014, consisting of periodic dispatch of naval forces as well as the dispatch of a maritime surveillance plane for shorter periods of time in consideration of the armed forces’ other tasks,
• continuing the Danish international lead as regards the finding of practical solutions to the legal challenges posed by the combating of piracy,
• concluding bilateral transfer agreements on the prosecution of pirates with the countries in the region, striving to ensure that the application process in relation to civilian armed guards is arranged in as flexible a manner as possible as well as striving to ensure that guidelines are drawn up internationally on the use of civilian armed guards,
• supporting the follow-up on ships’ compliance with the Best Management Practices (BMP), contributing to capacity-building so that the countries in the region can themselves meet the challenges in the longer term, including support for the establishment of coast guard functions in the region as well as prison capacity in Somaliland and Puntland,
• increasing the international efforts made to get at the men behind the pirates, for example through initiatives against money laundering.
The strategy will run until 2014.
Source: Danish Maritime Authority / maritimedanmark.dk
