Piracy is a global menace and a huge issue for our maritime community.
This year’s theme for World Maritime Day is ‘Piracy: Orchestrating the Response’, raising awareness of the issue of piracy and encouraging co-operation between the member states to eradicate it. World Maritime Day is celebrated yearly by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), during the last week of September. It is a day to focus attention on the importance of shipping safety, maritime security and the marine environment. This year the aim is to increase pressure at the political level to secure the immediate release of all hostages being held by pirates. The following objectives will also be pursued during the year…

In the main:

• Review and improve guidance to the industry and promote full compliance by ships with all recommended preventive, evasive and defensive measures;
• Promote greater levels of support from navies;
• Promote anti-piracy coordination and co-operation between and among States, regions and organizations;
• Build the capacity of States in piracy-infested regions of the world, and elsewhere, to deter, interdict and bring to justice those who commit acts of piracy and armed robbery against ships; and
• Equally importantly, provide care for those attacked or hijacked by pirates and for their families.

The IMO is particularly concerned about the number of incidents that have occurred off the coast of East Africa, near Somalia, the Indian Ocean and in the Gulf of Aden and is working to eradicate this from happening.

Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon commented,

Piracy is a global menace. We need to confront it with a strategy that focuses on deterrence, security, the rule of law and development. I commend the International Maritime Organization for its efforts to strengthen global cooperation on this challenge’ 3 February 2011.

For more information on the Day or the IMO please visit: http://www.imo.org/About/Events/WorldMaritimeDay/Pages/2010.aspx

Tags: East Africa, Piracy, World Maritime Day

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2011 at 12:52 am and is filed under Africa, days of significance, General, other interesting stuff . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.