Call for a holistic approach to solving the piracy problem

Commissioned by: els International LawyersAuthor: Joshua RozenbergDate: July 2009

els International Lawyers Accessibility, Versatility, Reliability

Call for a holistic approach to solving the piracy problem

Report of a roundtable discussion on 4 June 2009

Joshua Rozenberg and els International Lawyers

els International Lawyers Accessibility, Versatility, Reliability

Contents

Introduction 31 The problem 52 The reality 73 The navy 94 Armed guards and ransoms 125 Working together 136 A conduit for change 157 Conclusions 178 Recommendations 18

Participants 19

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Introduction

‘People don’t understand how piracy affects their daily lives,’ said Cdr KirkLippold, USN (ret). ‘They don’t understand how safeguarding sea lanes affectsthe economics of a country, even down to the level of individual jobs.’

Lippold, who was commanding officer of the USS Cole when it was attacked by al Qaeda terrorists in 2000, believes that a holistic approach to tackling piracy at sea is critically important. It would take time, he acknowledged. ‘But, howeverimperfect, this is a beginning. It’s up to us to build on it and solve this problem.’

The former navy commander was summing up a three-hour round-tablediscussion held on 4 June 2009 at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on the south bankof the River Thames in London. Twenty-five participants reflecting a wide range of maritime interests were brought together by els International Lawyers todevise a co-ordinated approach to the problems of marine piracy.

‘For any solution to work in the real world,’ said Richard Spector, senior partnerof els, ‘it needs collaboration at its core – particularly between the public andprivate sectors and among the institutions and organisations that make up theshipping industry’

One of the first fruits of that collaboration is this report.

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Overview of piracy activity in the Gulf of Aden and east coast of Somalia from January to early July 2009. Source: www.icc-ccs.org

Piracy activity in the Gulf of Aden from January to early July 2009.Source: www.icc-ccs.org

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The problem

Piracy is not a new problem. From about 1500 to 1832, the Barbary Corsairs ofNorth Africa made the Mediterranean a highly dangerous place, regularlyattacking and plundering Western trading vessels. During the so-called GoldenAge of Piracy – around 1570 to 1730 – robbery on the high seas was widespread,lucrative and threatening.1

It seems hard to believe that piracy is, once again, a major problem for theworld’s trading vessels. After all, plundering an oil tanker is not as easy aslooting a sailing ship. But modern-day pirates simply hold ship-owners toransom, demanding money for the safe release of a vessel and her cargo.Then they then sit back and wait for weeks or months, knowing the chances of success are good.2

The els International Lawyers roundtable discussion3 concentrated on piracy off the coast of Somalia. Sixty per cent of the world’s reported piracy takes placein the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, a waterway that carries nearly a thirdof Europe’s oil.

There has been a dramatic rise in the number of incidents, with more reportedattacks in the first five months of 2009 than in the whole of 2008. But theproportion of successful raids is going down. At the end of 2008, one attack inthree off the Horn of Africa was successful. By May 2009, the figure for the IndianOcean was one in four and the proportion of successful attacks in the Gulf ofAden was as little as one in 10.4

1

Attempted and actual hijackings in the Gulf of Aden andoff Somalia from 2004. Source: International MaritimeBureau, International Chamber of Commerce

1 Virginia Lunsford, ‘What Makes Piracy Work?’ in US Naval Institute Proceedings,December 2008, usni.org

2 Ship-owners are reported to have paid ransoms of between $1m and $3m in recent months.3 4 June 2009. See Introduction to this paper and Appendix: List of Participants.4 Source: Capt Pottengal Mukundan, Piracy Reporting Centre (International Maritime Bureau),

speaking at the meeting on 4 June 2009.

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02004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 to

mid-June

Attempted

Actual

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According to Roger Middleton, a consultant researcher at Chatham House inLondon who specialises in the Horn of Africa, the only hope of a long-termsolution to the problems of piracy in the region is a political solution withinSomalia.5

Piracy is a land-based problem, he told the meeting. ‘What we have seen inSomalia over the past 20 years is a complete and utter collapse of the state.And that means there is an environment where there is nothing to stop peoplebecoming pirates. But there is also a terrible humanitarian and economicsituation inside the country – and that provides the incentive for piracy.’

Middleton said the risks were surprisingly low. ‘For a young Somali, the cost-benefit analysis is massively in favour of being a pirate. If you stay at home, yourbest hope is to make $500 to $600 a year. Even in Somalia, that is a minusculeamount. Compare that with being a pirate. Your chances of making $10,000 or$20,000 a year are pretty good. Your chances of dying are not that high.’

Capt Mustafa Kanafani, who comes from a ship-owning family in Syria, agreedthat the causes of piracy lie in countries such as Somalia. It had grown hugely in scale and the international community needed to come together to promotestability in the area.

Somalia is not ungovernable, according to Middleton. In the second half of 2006,when the Islamic Courts Union ruled for six months, there was a dramaticreduction in piracy off Somalia.

But everyone agrees that a political solution is still some years off. We mustexplore other options.

5 Roger Middleton, ‘Piracy in Somalia’, October 2008, chathamhouse.org.uk

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The reality

Per Gullestrup knows how it feels to have a ship seized by pirates. He runs Clipper Group, a leading international shipping consortium based in Denmark.In November 2008, he heard that one of his ships had been hijacked off the coastof Somalia. It was the CEC Future, crewed mostly by Russians.

‘The most important thing is to tell the crew’s next-of-kin,’ he told the elsInternational Lawyers discussion. ‘Hijacking is a very traumatic experience –more so, we believe, for the next of kin than for the crew itself. It’s a race againsttime to get to them before the press does.’

For Gullestrup, the immediate sense was one of frustration. He had followed allthe safety advice and best-management practices available at the time. But theCEC Future, sailing slowly and low in the water, was a prime target for pirates.

‘When dealing with Somali pirates it is important to remember that this is abusiness for them,’ Gullestrup explained. ‘It is not ideological. They are not goingto shoot the crew – or at least they have not so far.’6

If it’s a business, there must be professionals. Clipper’s insurers signed up anexperienced negotiator. The pirates did the same. It took more than two months of haggling before a ransom figure was agreed. But Gullestrup believes that ship-owners have not done themselves any favours by failing to co-operate with each other.

‘We have had nearly 70 hijackings so far and, almost every time, the ship-ownerstarts with a blank sheet of paper,’ he said. ‘The Somali pirates are much better at sharing information than we are.’

‘The result is that we have seen an escalation of the ransoms paid. And everytime that ransom goes up $50,000, that’s your benchmark and you raise thestakes.’

The Rev Canon Ken Peters, director of justice and welfare at the Mission toSeafarers, urged ship-owners to recognise the effect of hijacking on its victims.

‘There is a perception among ship-owners – immediately after a ship has been released – of “job well done”. They then expect the safe passage of that ship to the next port of call while leaving it in the hands of traumatised crew,’ he said.

‘Is that secure passage? There may not have been physical abuse of the crew butthere is certainly psychological stress. And yet a new crew is not generally put onboard. The crew that have suffered the hostage-taking are expected to continuewith business as usual.’

Capt Predrag Brazzoduro runs the Seafarers’ Union of Croatia and is also co-ordinator for his country of the International Transport Workers’ Federation.He called for better communications between ship-owners, negotiators andhostages’ families. Brazzoduro argued that crews should have the right to refuse to work in a high-risk zone around Somalia. To make an informed choice,a seafarer would need to know his ship’s planned route before departure from the previous port of call.

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6 The MV Marathon, a Dutch-owned ship, was hijacked on 7 May 2009 and released on 23 June. At that point, the Dutch government announced that one of the eight Ukrainian crew members had beenshot dead by hijackers. Another crew member had been injured but his condition was reported asstable by a Dutch warship taking part in a NATO counter-piracy mission.

8

After getting the CEC Future back, Gullestrup kept in touch with the pirates’representative, a freelance negotiator called Mr Ali. ‘We have used him as asource of information on how the pirates operate in order to deal with them in a more effective manner in future.’

Gullestrup had to do this, he explained, because the mass of intelligencegathered from each hijacking was not being centrally co-ordinated – an issue we shall explore later in this paper.

But surely the simplest way of avoiding hijackers around the Horn of Adenwould be go the long way round Africa, passing the Cape of Good Hope?

Capt Chaitanya Dixit of the Kuwait Oil Tanker Group said his fleet was doing just that – though the additional fuel increased costs by 30 per cent.

And would Gullestrup follow suit? ‘I’d love to,’ he said, ‘but only if we all do.’

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The navy

The risk of attacks on merchant shipping is bound to be reduced if the world’snavies can provide armed escorts.

In December 2008, the European Union launched its first maritime operation.Operation Atalanta has among its aims ‘the deterrence, prevention andrepression of acts of piracy and armed robbery off the Somali coast’.

Established initially for a one-year period, Operation Atalanta has now beenextended for a further year until December 2010.7 In July 2009, the operation was commanded from Northwood, to the north of London, by Rear Admiral Peter Hudson. Off Somalia, the naval force was under Spanish command – with 13 warships and three aircraft.

In January 2009, the US Navy announced the creation of a combined task force to conduct counter-piracy operations. CTF 151 was established by the CombinedMaritime Forces, a coalition drawn from more than 20 countries. It was tooperate in and around the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and theRed Sea.

Originally US-led, CTF 151 was under Turkish command by July 2009 – though it was directed from the USS Gettysburg, a guided-missile cruiser. The Britishfrigate HMS Portland was part of CTF 151 for eight months.8 CTF 151 is supportedby international meetings held ashore.9

MajGen Thomas L Wilkerson, US Marine Corps (ret), is CEO of the US NavalInstitute, an independent forum for analysis and debate. He told the elsInternational Lawyers discussion that the problem of piracy was not new.And it was not going away.

‘It’s getting worse – quickly. 2009 has already surpassed 2008 for the number of incidents in the Gulf of Aden region. The figures for 2008 far exceededoccurrences of the problem in 2007.’

In Wilkerson’s view, sending warships to the region alone would not stop the pirates.

‘That can only be accomplished by eliminating their bases onshore and it willentail military operations,’ he said. ‘Though individuals and groups in manyquarters say they wish to stop piracy, their actions to date prove otherwise.’

No government had chosen to attack the pirates’ land bases, he pointed out,despite UN Security Council approval.

Giles Noakes, chief maritime security officer at the independent shippingorganisation BIMCO10, insisted that failure to defeat the pirates was no reason for the task forces to pull out. Warships were already preventing successfulattacks, he said. More warships would deter more hijackers.

Wilkerson was not impressed. ‘CTF 151 was doomed to failure from the start,’ he insisted. ‘The most powerful navies in the world are represented by thecountries around this table. And we have ceded control of over one millionsquare miles of ocean to a bunch of thugs in speedboats.’

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7 www.mschoa.org/EUCouncil.aspx8 For up-to-date information see the CTF 151 website: www.navy.mil/local/CTF-1519 http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=45681

10 www.bimco.org

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But the former marine found little support around the table, even from formercomrades-in-arms.

‘General, I would disagree,’ said Kirk Lippold, the retired US Navy commander.‘CTF 151 is a starting-point.’ Others pointed to the success of joint action.

Why, though, do the world’s navies appear powerless to defeat what FotiosKamperis dismissed as a ‘bunch of bandits with small arms’? Kamperis, a formervice-admiral in the Greek Navy, is now human resources manager for TsakosShipping and Trading, which has a fleet of nearly 70 vessels.

‘It happens because the navies do not have a specific mission to tackle piracy,’said Kamperis. ‘They have other missions: to escort aid missions and protectships.’

‘Secondly, they do not have a unified command. If you give the navies a singleunified command and a mission, I am sure they will be able to eliminate thismenace.’

Kamperis urged the International Maritime Organisation to lobby the UN forwhat he regarded as the necessary Security Council resolution in support.

‘Members of the shipping industry feel that nations do not care because there isno national threat and because ship-owners pay the cost of piracy,’ he said.

Others round the table also wanted to see more action by the world’s navies.Paul Shields, director of operations at Zodiac Maritime Agencies Ltd, managesthe largest UK-flagged fleets.

‘So far, four of our vessels have been attacked, none successfully,’ Shields said.‘In each case, we received no assistance. There’s a system in place but it doesn’tgive any reassurance to our seafarers.’

But Capt Pottengal Mukundan, who runs the International Maritime Bureau’spiracy reporting centre in Kuala Lumpur, spoke up for the world’s navies.

‘Given the resources they have, what they do is tremendous. There are a greatmany cases where attacks have been avoided because of prompt naval action.’

The improvement had been particularly marked in the Gulf of Aden, off thenorthern coast of Somalia. One reason was the increased naval presence,Mukundan said. Another was the defensive measures adopted by ships’masters.11

But the Somali basin — the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Somalia – is ahuge area of water and much harder to protect.

Mukundan also called for more action to be taken against the mother-ships –captured vessels used by pirates as off-shore bases. A mother-ship can keeplaunching skiffs full of hijackers until it runs out of provisions and has to return to port.

‘Taking out the mother-ships is a tactical priority and UN Security Councilresolutions give navies the power to do that,’ said Mukundan.

11 See chapter 4 of this paper

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And what does he mean by ‘taking out’? At the very least, he wants themdisarmed.

‘We’d like to see those on board arrested, if only we could find a mechanism forthem to be handed over for prosecution quickly somewhere.’

Sean Woollerson, a marine insurance broker with Jardine Lloyd Thompson Ltd,said the Somali pirates were a ‘canny adversary’. At the moment, brokers did notbelieve that Operation Atalanta was reducing the risk to merchant shipping. Ifrisks could be reduced then premiums would go down. The money saved couldbe put towards increased security which, in turn, would further drive downpremiums.

Guillaume Bonnissent, a special risks underwriter with Hiscox, pointed out apractical problem for navies: it is not always easy to recognise when a vessel has been captured for use as a mother-ship.

No doubt it would all be much easier if pirates still flew the skull andcrossbones.

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Armed guards and ransoms

The els International Lawyers meeting considered whether ships should carryarmed security guards while in dangerous waters.

US-flagged ships are required to conduct risk assessments, the meeting wastold. They must submit the findings to the Coastguard. If they are assessed asneeding armed guards, they must carry them.

Peter Hinchliffe, from the International Chamber of Shipping, said hisorganisation did not condone what he regarded as private militia companies.

‘But we recognise that some ship-owners will have to do that because there is no alternative at the moment.’

A better idea, Hinchliffe added, would be for states to provide detachments ofuniformed military personnel who would remain on board ships that were atrisk of attack. ‘The responsibility for the use of lethal force must lie with thecommander of the detachment – not with the master of the ship, who is notequipped to make a decision’.

What are the prospects of this?

‘There are three flag states that are prepared to offer military guards,’ Hinchliffesaid – without naming them. ‘Two have done so but the third may not have thecapacity.’

These units would comprise no more than half a dozen men. They could call forsupport; but vessels in the Indian Ocean are likely to find the nearest warshipstoo far away to be of much use.

Giles Noakes sounded a note of caution. ‘The industry as a whole is adamantthat the use of armed guards on board vessels is extremely dangerous. If youput armed guards – military or private – on tankers or any other vessel carryinga hazardous cargo, you increase the risk profile.’

In exceptional circumstances, he conceded, the risk assessment might be thatthere was no alternative. But it wouldn’t need many more naval vessels for theexisting Gulf of Aden transit scheme to work perfectly.12

Noakes said there would still not be enough warships to protect the Somalibasin. It was here that on-board military personnel – rather than private guards– would be particularly useful for slow-moving vessels.

Bernard Wainstein, from els International Lawyers, pointed out that privatesecurity guards could not open fire under English law unless they were usingsuch force as was proportionate in the circumstances for the purposes of self-defence.

But Noakes said that a UN Security Council resolution would allow militaryguards to be assigned even if their country’s laws or rules of engagement wereregarded as too restrictive.

Are ransoms lawful? Not if they are seen as supporting terrorism. But NeilRoberts, who represents the interests of marine underwriters at Lloyds, pointedout that it was not otherwise illegal for a ship-owner to insure against paying aransom or to make a payment. ‘Insurers don’t pay the ransoms themselves,’ heexplained. ‘They indemnify owners as far as they can.’

Vivek Puri, chief technical officer of Global Ship Lease, pointed out that normalwar risks insurance does not cover the cost of paying a ransom. But the Londonunderwriting community would generally indemnify the ship-owner on thebasis that paying a ransom was a way of mitigating the loss.

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12 See chapter 5 of this paper

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Working together

In an effort to counter piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia,nearly a dozen representative bodies from the shipping industry published a 10-page guide to best practice in February 2009.13

The guide includes practical advice to masters, pointing out, for example, thatvessels are most vulnerable at first light and last light. It also recommends arange of defensive measures, such as zig-zagging at high speed if pirates try tocome alongside – and lashing dummies to the rails, dressed as lookouts.

One of the organisations supporting the guide is INTERTANKO, which represents 80 per cent of the world’s independent tanker owners.14 Its marine director,Capt Howard Snaith, reported that self-protective measures and defensiveactions were proving their worth.

‘Nearly 80 per cent of attacks are thwarted through the ship’s own self-protectivemeasures,’ he said.

But 30 per cent of shipping in the Gulf of Aden was still not following theinternationally recommended group transit corridor. ‘They’re wandering around,totally unaware,’ Snaith observed.

Why should this be? Nobody knew. But the statistics were clear: of all the shipshijacked in the Gulf of Aden, only four had been using the corridor.

It is not for want of trying. Capt Damir Guzobad from Tanskerska Plovidba,the largest shipping company in Croatia, said that one of his ships had beenattacked recently, despite using the corridor and following best practice.

The ship had called for help and a French naval helicopter stopped the piratesfrom boarding.

What happened to the pirates, though? ‘Nothing,’ replied Guzobad. ‘Theymounted another attack a few hours later.’

The attempted hijacking should not have come as a surprise, explained Snaith. Though the shipping corridors were 500 miles long, they were only five miles wide – so pirates knew exactly where the ships were. But so did the naval protection vessels: the whole point of the group transit corridor was to maximise naval assets in the region and provide the best protection to merchant ships.

Snaith acknowledged that warships were ‘only a sticking-plaster on theproblem’. In his view, the root cause was ashore in Somalia.

But nobody thought that a failed state could become governable overnight.Instead, a consensus began to emerge around the table in favour of greater co-operation between fleets.

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13 Best Management Practices to Deter Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the Coast of Somalia,available through several websites including www.marisec.org

14 The International Association of Independent Tanker Owners: www.intertanko.com

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‘For all the organisations that exist to bring ship-owners together,’ said AndreasBisbas from Tsakos Shipping, ‘I don’t think ship-owners are all that good atsharing information among each other. Speaking from the Greek side, we’renotoriously awful at sharing information.’

Per Gullestrup, from Denmark, agreed. ‘It only hits home for an owner when he is being attacked or when he has had a ship hijacked. Until then, it’s the other guy’s fault.’

Gullestrup thought a conduit was necessary for sharing information. But PeterHinchliffe, from the International Chamber of Shipping, said that what wasneeded was the information: a conduit was there already.

We shall explore that conduit in the next chapter.

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A conduit for change

As we saw in chapter 3, the European Union has decided to extend its firstmaritime operation. Operation Atalanta is currently commanded fromNorthwood by Rear Admiral Peter Hudson.

Also part of the EU naval force is a co-ordinating body called Maritime SecurityCentre (Horn of Africa) – or MSCHOA for short.15 By talking to shippingcompanies, masters and other interested parties, MSCHOA aims to build up apicture of vulnerable shipping in the Gulf of Aden, the Somali Basin and theirapproaches. MSCHOA, which is manned by military and merchant navypersonnel from several countries, is part of Operation Atalanta.

We saw at the end of chapter 5 that the EU co-ordinating centre was notreceiving the feedback it needed.

‘MSCHOA are desperate for feedback,’ said Peter Hinchliffe from the InternationalChamber of Shipping. ‘As I understand it, they are not getting feedback from theshipping industry. And I think the shipping industry is selling itself short.’

There was political and military support for MSCHOA, Hinchliffe told the elsInternational Lawyers discussion. And the operation was working successfully.

‘But we need the shipping industry to keep giving us information so that we cangenerate the political will.’

Several European countries joined the International Contact Group on Piracy offthe Coast of Somalia when it was set up by the US and its allies in January 2009.It has four working groups; one – chaired by the UK – deals with co-ordinationbetween governments, information-sharing and capacity-building. Hinchliffesaid it was already producing worthwhile results, for example on how toprosecute pirates once they have been detained.

Giles Noakes, of BIMCO, thought the real problem was that ship-owners werevery conservative. ‘They don’t like speaking about what they perceive to befailure.’

Mark Calter, operations director of the intelligence consultancy Olton Solutions,pointed out that communications at sea were not particularly difficult. Ships’masters could SMS message each other and share information using hand-heldsatellite phones on the Thuraya network, he explained. That was what thepirates used.

But the more serious communications problem was getting the message out tothe 30 per cent of vessels that were not following best-management practice.

‘That’s the biggest issue we need to address today,’ said Noakes. Most of thesevessels were not members of INTERTANKO, INTERCARGO16 or the InternationalChamber of Shipping.

Howard Snaith, currently seconded to MSCHOA, told us that its work wasexemplary. Navies at sea were exchanging intelligence in on-line chat-rooms,he said.

‘And this is not just within the European context. It’s the Russians, the Japanese,the Chinese, the European navies, the Americans – all talking to each other atsea level, where this is taking place. This has never happened before.’

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15 www.mschoa.eu16 International Association of Dry Cargo Shipowners: www.intercargo.org

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But although there was unprecedented co-operation at sea, Snaith pointed toproblems at the political level on dry land.

‘Yes, the problem is ashore’, agreed Christian Dupont, deputy head of maritimesecurity for the European Commission. ‘Somalia has experienced chaos for morethan 18 years. And despite huge international aid – including a large Europeancontribution – the situation can still be described as a humanitarian emergency.’

But, Dupont added, the problem was also about maintaining law and order ininternational waters.

‘And that doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want to do. You cannot police a region the size of the Mediterranean with just 12 frigates. We have to respectthe normal international framework. And we have to convince the Somalis that what we are doing is not just safeguarding our own interests at sea; it’sparticipating in a long-lasting solution implying a combination of civilian actionto restore decent living conditions in the region and also naval tools asappropriate.’

There was general support around the table for using MSCHOA as the conduitfor sharing information.

Tom Wilkerson believed that this would be no more than a ‘postage stamp-sizedsolution’ to the problem. But Noakes disagreed. The combined efforts of theindustry, the navies and the coordinating bodies were reducing the proportion of successful attacks.

‘The General has raised a very sound academic argument,’ Noakes continued.‘But this is not an academic issue. This is a day-to-day issue. There is lawlessnessashore. And if there is lawlessness ashore there will be lawlessness at sea. And if the lawlessness ashore is not going to be solved in the near future – as I thinkeverybody agrees – then we have got to go with what we have. And it’s up togovernments and navies to help us, in co-ordination with the industry, to do thebest we can.’

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Conclusions

By the summer of 2009, international shipping should have been in a strongposition to deter pirates from operating off the coast of Somalia.

Some 20 countries had put warships in the region, including the US andmembers of the EU. Ship-owners had circulated a guide to defeating the pirates.Smaller nations had contributed to these international coalitions and weretaking their share of the command. There was an internationally recommendedgroup transit corridor.

But too many ships in the area were simply sailing their own course. It is hard toescape the conclusion that these ships’ masters and their owners should carryat least part of the blame for the fact that pirates are still enjoying some success.

The hard-to-pronounce MSCHOA is an EU-backed co-ordination centre. Itswebsite17 appears to provide mariners with a host of valuable information –much of it, quite rightly, not available to the public at large. But any clearing-house depends on the co-operation of those in a position to help others. To do its work effectively, MSCHOA needs to know about merchant vessels operating in the region.

What emerged clearly from the els International Lawyers round-table discussionwas that ships’ masters and owners were not providing MSCHOA with sufficientfeedback. This seems to be an opportunity lost.

Just as any merchant ship will go to the assistance of a mariner in distress, everyship should provide MSCHOA with the intelligence on which it depends. For itspart, MSCHOA should continue with its efforts to publicise its work more widely.

Ships need an international body to co-ordinate anti-piracy measures in theHorn of Africa. But there is no need to re-invent the capstan. MSCHOA can dothe job and deserves the full support of the shipping industry.

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17 www.mschoa.eu

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Recommendations

The els International Lawyers discussion on 4 June 2009 prompted a number ofrecommendations. A draft was circulated among most of those who attendedand has been amended in the light of their comments.

The recommendations that follow have not been approved by any of theorganisations involved. But they may be a starting point for further progress.

1 All shipping in the waters off Somalia should commit to full co-operation with the Maritime Security Centre, Horn of Africa (MSCHOA). Masters shouldprovide information requested by MSCHOA and follow the Centre’s advice.MSCHOA should provide feedback on progress.

2 Insurers should be lobbied to offer lower premiums for fleets that candemonstrate reduced risk by complying with the industry’s best-managementpractices and by co-operating with MSCHOA. Brokers should report progress onthis objective to ship-owners’ associations, which should then advise theirmembers.

3 Ship-owners’ associations should consider whether the exchange of informationamong merchant ships would be improved if all vessels had modern channels ofcommunication. These associations should assess ways of encouraging trampsteamers and other lone vessels to share information with fleets on an industry-led intranet.

4 Governments should be lobbied to maintain and enhance the naval task forcesin the region. Ship-owners’ associations should seek assurances that navalsupport will not be reduced or withdrawn until the threat of piracy is greatlydiminished.

5 A further meeting should be held by industry representatives in December 2009to review progress. Relevant authorities should send representatives to thismeeting to show support for this initiative. Media coverage of the meetingshould be permitted, subject to proper safeguards.

6 In the long term, international bodies should help restore good governance tofailed states, withdrawing the incentive for piracy and punishing thoseresponsible for it.

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Participants

Andreas BisbasInsurance Manager, Tsakos Shipping and Trading S.A.

Guillaume BonnisentSpecial Risk Underwriter, Hiscox

Capt Predrag BrazzoduroNational Secretary, Seafarers’ Union of Croatia

Mark CalterOperations Director, Olton Solutions

James ClarkeSolicitor, els International Lawyers

Adam CorbettLondon Correspondent, Trade Winds

Darren DalePartner, els International Lawyers

Capt Chaitanya DixitSupdt, Fleet Operations Group, Kuwait Oil Tanker Co S.A.K.

Christian DupontDeputy Head of Unit for Maritime Security, Directorate General for Transport and Energy, European Commission

Per GullestrupPresident and CEO, Clipper Projects A/S and Clipper Group A/S

Paul GuntonManaging Editor, Fairplay Shipping Weekly

Capt Damir GuzobadMarine Superintendent, Technical Division, Tankerska Plovidba d.d.

Peter HinchliffeMarine Director, International Chamber of Shipping

Capt Mustafa KanafaniIndependent Shipping and Maritime Expert

Fotios Kamperis, V.Adm (ret) HNTraining Manager, Tsakos Shipping and Trading S.A.

Cdr Kirk Lippold US Navy (ret)Former commanding officer of the warship USS Cole

Roger MiddletonHorn of Africa Specialist, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House

Capt Pottengal MukundanDirector, International Maritime Bureau

Giles NoakesChief Maritime Officer, BIMCO

The Revd Canon Ken PetersDirector of Justice and Welfare, Mission to Seafarers

Vivek PuriChief Technical Officer, Global Ship Lease Inc

Clare RodwayManaging Director, Kysen PR

Joshua RozenbergLegal Commentator and Discussion Chairman

Neil RobertsSenior Underwriting Executive, Lloyds Market Association

Capt Howard SnaithMarine & Chemical Director, INTERTANKO

Paul ShieldsDirector of Operations, Zodiac Maritime Agencies Ltd

Sandra SpearesLaw/Passenger Shipping Correspondent, Lloyd’s List

Richard SpectorPartner, els International Lawyers

MajGen Thomas L Wilkerson, US Marine Corps (Ret)CEO, US Naval Institute

Sean WoollersonPartner, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Ltd

Bernard WainsteinSolicitor, els International Lawyers