Dubai: The first Maritime Counter Piracy Conference opened on Monday with calls to tackle the offshore problem onshore, through helping Somalia achieve stability and prosperity.
Maritime piracy requires a comprehensive and integrated response led by all concerned stakeholders in this field, Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister, said in his opening speech.
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"For the UAE, this conference represents a significant part of our policies and efforts in counter-piracy response.
"In the military sphere, our armed forces have joined international efforts in freeing hijacked ships and in cooperating with our friends in the international community," Shaikh Abdullah said.
"This was clearly manifested during this month when the UAE forces cooperated with the US Fifth Fleet to free the captured MV Arrilah," he said.
"The UAE recognises that the solution of the maritime piracy problem is essentially connected to the issues of stability and sustainable development as the only long-term solution to violence and crime, and there is no doubt that any action taken in the field of countering piracy would not be effective unless essential changes to the conditions of stability and security on land in Somalia are made," Shaikh Abdullah said.
In his speech, Sultan Ahmad Bin Sulayem, Chairman of DP World, said that while the current international focus is on finding near-term offshore solutions for the piracy menace, particularly in the area of defensive technologies, it is increasingly clear that the community of nations needs to be thinking also long-term and onshore.
"This is because stable, prosperous economies are the only effective enduring solution to piracy, which feeds on the lack of opportunities to make honest money, the lack of structure, the lack of security, the lack of hope for a stable future," Bin Sulayem said.
Delivering the keynote speech, Mohammad Abdulahi Omar Asharq, Foreign Minister, Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, said Somalis believe that they had been abandoned by the international community.
The Somali Foreign Minister concluded with a call to the international community to make the urgent and necessary investment in the Somali Security forces to assist the Government to build its capability and establish its national authority. "Without this twin strategy of military authority and political reform and reconciliation, we cannot end the consequences of the civil war in Somalia. Unless we do so we will not resolve the causes of piracy."
DP World offers fund
DP World on Monday announced a contribution of $500,000 towards initiatives aimed at addressing the root causes of piracy. Of that $400,000 will go towards the Port Community Livelihood and Security Initiative (PCLSI), a DP World-backed collaborative project already under way in Africa, while $100,000 will be donated to the UN Trust Fund to Support Initiatives of States Countering Piracy off the Coast of Somalia.
