AU discusses maritime crime

Meeting hosted in the Seychelles.

African Union discusses maritime crime

Stephen Spark

Seychelles is hosting a meeting of African Union ministers to review lessons from the fight against piracy.

The forum on 8-9 February is looking at how to apply this knowledge to other forms of maritime crime in the Indian Ocean and around the African continent. Drug smuggling, human trafficking, illegal migration, robbery at sea, terrorism, and maritime pollution are priority issues.

Other organisations participating in the event include the United Nations, COMESA, ECOWAS, the Indian Ocean Commission, and individual states, including some from the European Union (EU).

Indian Ocean states such as Seychelles and Mauritius rely heavily on the ‘blue economy’ – fisheries, cruise tourism, offshore oil and gas, and mining of seabed minerals – which faces the threat of increasingly sophisticated transnational maritime crime.

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Source: ihsmaritime360.com