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Governments and private businesses on Tuesday donated $4.5 million to a UN fund aimed at fighting piracy off Somalia during a counter-piracy conference in Dubai, with virtually all of the money earmarked for prosecutions and deterrents.
The money is going to the UN Contact Group for Piracy Off the Coast of Somalia, which last year spent $6.2 million on projects such rehabilitating a prison that will host pirates in Hargeisa, Somaliland and boosting the legal and law enforcement capacity of nations dealing with piracy, such as Seychelles. The Contact Group is an invitation only series of topic-specific conferences that seeks to coordinate the international response to piracy.
Much of the money came from governments, with the Netherlands pledging $1.4 million and the UAE stumping up $1 million. UAE state-owned ports operator DP World - joint organizer of the conference with the government - offered $100,000 to the fund, and also $400,000 to projects it says will fight piracy by strengthening port communities around Somalia, although not in pirate den itself.
To put this amount in context, it is estimated that a total of $238 million in ransoms to pirates were paid in 2010, with total maritime industry losses calculated to be as high as $12 billion once the cost of insurance, the rerouting, security and around 30 international navy ships patrolling the Horn of Africa are included. There is every indication that the costs to nations and industry will be significantly higher in 2011.
The foreign minister for Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, Mohamed Abdullahi Omar, who on Monday called for more international aid to help fight piracy, said he was “happy” with the pledges, calling the conference the beginning of a new effort to tackle the problem off Somalia.
Delegates find pledges disappointing
However, some delegates privately said the pledges, which saw no money donated by big economies such as the US, were less than impressive. Additionally the "land based solutions" focus delivered some bizarre and memorable moments. A German diplomat calling for the "sanitization" of the Somali coast, diplomats from Sudan, Ghana and other nations urging for money to spent on their regions and the "land" part of land based seemingly being just about anywhere other than the home of piracy, Puntland.
Puntland's Finance Minister Farah Ali Jama told Somalia Report he was disappointed by the response, and pointed out that from the millions spent last year, the semi-autonomous region had not seen a penny.
Alan Cole, the head of the UN Office on Drug's and Crime's program to combat piracy in Somalia, said during the conference that the construction of a prison to house pirates in Puntland was set to start this week, but Jama said he would only believe it when he "saw the concrete."
Numerous other ideas were traded by both private sector and foreign government attendees who attended the luxurious event complete with $1000-a-night hotel suites and lavish service. Rebuilding the Somali Coast Guard was a popular idea for the maritime security crowd, sending delegates to yet more conferences was another and passing more laws seemed to be the most popular solution.
Root Causes A Lost Cause?
The inability or disinterest of many of the conference members to accurately identify the root causes of piracy and confusion on the actual fractured and diverse state of each of Somalia's autonomous and breakaway regions was evidenced by sparse attendance at a breakout session on root causes and the overwhelming number of generic but well-intentioned proposals. A Philippines government representative made an impassioned speech on the inequity in the number of his kidnapped countrymen and his resultant pledge of $25,000 struck many people as symbolic of the conference's tone and substance.
While diplomats soft-peddled non-kinetic solutions, representatives from the maritime industry like Maersk and INTERTANKO (the owner of the recently hijacked and ransomed VLCC Irene SL) better reflected the hawkish element private sector side of the conference. Although the idea of the conference was to bring together private industry and governments, they seemed far apart on a solution.
Does "Land Based" Include Somalia ?
Few attendees, except Somalis, seemed to understand the irony of the host nation supporting a land-based solutions conference and donating the bulk of their money ($1.4M) to a UN Contact Group for Piracy Off the Coast of Somalia. The Group has funded programs like prisons and training but often in areas not affected by piracy or sunk money into other countries.
The one government official who stood out was Somali TFG Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdulahi Omar Asharq who grabbed headlines today with his frank and brutal statement on day one: "Piracy can only be uprooted on land, where it grows and persists."
His views also were in line with the host's opinion that it was time to stop containing or reacting to piracy and getting down to land-based solutions. UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan opened the conference the day before by appealing for the delegates to agree on "a successful response must address not just the symptoms of piracy, but also the underlying causes." But the second day did not reveal any substantial shift in government's insistence on off shore and non-Somali based programs. The conference, organized by the United Arab Emirates government and the state-owned ports operator DP World, has focused primarily on calls for measures to address the root causes of piracy, with many delegates calling for development and livelihood projects in Somalia. However, virtually of the funds pledged are committed to deterrents, such as an improved coastguard in Somalia, better prisons and stronger judicial systems.
“So far most of funding from the trust fund has gone in area or prosecution or law and order,” said the UN's Special Representative to Somalia, Augustine P Mahiga, who called the funds pledged “inadequate” to address issues of law and order.
“The issue of development ... has to be linked to other developments sources from other UN agencies, and those that are related to creating development in stable areas, like Hobyo, Bosaso,” he added.
Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
On a brutal level, the relative costs to nations of ransoms, naval operations to conduct escorts, insurance and security or even the price of mounting a rescue attempt seemed to dwarf the tiny contributions made by the attendees. Many diplomatic representatives who had been canvassed by the local Minister of Foreign Affairs in a private VIP-only meeting the night before were missing when they were invited to take their turn at the podium. China was memorable for its absence when called to pledge. Diplomatic representatives from India took pains to detail their contribution via their ongoing naval efforts, but promised to come back with a pledge amount after consultation with their government.
Colonel John Steed, the military adviser to the UN Political Office on Somalia, acknowledged more had to be done to promote alternatives to the pirate-driven economies of coastal towns in Puntland and Galmudug.
“The solution to piracy is not in the deep sea, it is capacity building inside Somalia,” he said. “Somehow we have to replace the millions of (pirate) dollars that is going into the economy.”
Conference missing target
One delegate, a Somali who runs a small shipping company out of Bosaso, said the conference completely missed its target by failing to provide alternative livelihoods for impoverished Somali youth who turn to piracy for lack of other ways to make money.
“Nobody is talking to the pirates, when it is very easy: they are sitting in the same coffee shop as you in Bosaso,” he told Somalia Report on the condition of anonymity. “Even the money spent on this conference, if you invested it on 100 pirates, they could become professors.”
Even the programs supposedly targeting livelihoods, such as DP World's ports initiative, have no presence in Somalia itself, instead setting their sight on ports in places such as Djibouti. According to Steed, this is down to the dangerous nature of working in Somalia.
“There are significant difficulties in security terms in working in some of these areas,” he said. “That is why both the Somalis and the international community have a great deal of difficulty in working on the ground.”