Topic: International Cooperation in Combatting Piracy
Country: South Africa
Delegate Name: Emma Wilkerson
School: Forest Hills Eastern High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All South Africa position papers GLIMUN 2015 committees
Piracy has been addressed by the UN Security Council in Somalia by passing ten resolutions and in the Gulf of Guinea by passing two resolutions. There has been organization's set to closely monitor piracy and advise nations as well as the UN to display how they should respond to such issues: the organizations include, the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against ships in Asia, the International Maritime Organization, and NATO and ASEAN which are regional bodies. Piracy has been a big issue in areas of the Gulf of Guinea, Somalia and little in the Mozambique Channel. To stop any further piracy attacks in the Mozambique Channel the South African Navy is placed to curb piracy and related maritime crime, this is known as the Copper Operation. Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, Minister of Defense and Military Veterans in South Africa, believes in order to keep the Mozambique Channel free from piracy the SA Navy needs to remain a presence until global piracy shows reduction. South Africa and the rest of Southern Africa is relying on the Mozambique Channel because it is our highly used trade and shipping route for business. South Africa’s piracy regime is provided for in our Defence Act of 2002 which incorporates the crime of piracy as defined in UNCLOS. South Africa has also signed the Durban Resolution on Maritime Safety, Maritime Security and Protection of the Marine Environment in Africa (2009), as well as the Djibouti Code of Conduct, which are both directed at ensuring a uniform approach to maritime safety in Africa. South Africa has also discouraged pirate actions on the seas, the Trilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Tanzania and Mozambique, which displays details of the effective patrolling of the East Coast of the Southern African Indian Ocean.
Piracy has not necessarily hit South Africa itself but a few times it has hit the Mozambique Channel, this than affecting South Africa. If those attacks keep occurring South Africa and Southern Africa will be hurt tremendously with the lost of a good trading and shipping route. We are preventing piracy even if we are not collecting pirates; pirates do not come because our Navy is in place. We are apart of the IMO (International Maritime Organization) and we have come together with France in the exercise OXIDE to further protect the Mozambique Channel.
The goal of OXIDE was to have a joint operation to strengthen cooperation between the navies of the two countries and staffs to afford to have a collective response in times of crisis, and to ensure the maritime security in the Mozambican Channel.
We believe that we can insure safety in the Mozambique Channel by keeping our Navy on guard. More of what we are doing as a country needs to be more apparent in the Gulf of Guinea and Somalia. We can end piracy as an international community. Piracy is the lowest it has been in Six years. Increased security in the problem areas will make piracy no longer a threat.
