Piracy: Operation Atalanta (EUC Report)

Lord Jopling Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jopling]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend and neighbour, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge. Although I am now a member of Sub-Committee C, sadly I was not a member when this report was put together. However, I am at the same time a rapporteur of a committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and a year ago I presented a report on behalf of one of its committees on the Somali piracy situation, which was accepted by the Assembly. This weekend in Warsaw, at the annual meeting of the NATO Assembly, I shall again be presenting a report, which is entitled Maritime Security: NATO and EU Roles and Co-ordination.

I have spoken here before about the need for much closer co-operation between NATO and the EU. In some cases, that co-operation continues to be abysmal. The lack of co-operation between NATO and the EU is often explained away because of the situation with regard to Turkey, Greece and Cyprus, but in spite of that I believe that there should be no reason not to have much greater co-operation in certain fields, especially now that France has rejoined the central command structure of NATO. As an example—this has nothing to do with Somalia—in the Mediterranean, NATO and the EU both operate, on one hand with FRONTEX and on the other hand with Active Endeavour. However, the separate activities there, although similar, are barely co-ordinated. It is true, I think, that NATO and the EU work together a good deal better in Somalia than in other places, so that is a start, which I very much welcome.

The situation off the Horn of Africa is becoming even more worrying—I agree with many of the things that my noble friend Lord Hamilton said about that. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to the continuing, very serious situation: the number of kidnapped seafarers; the fact that 2010 is likely to be worse than 2009; the almost £100 million that the terrorists got last year; the widening area of pirate activity; the problem of arresting Somalis cruising around in small boats with heavy weapons and no fishing nets and therefore no evidence to convict when they throw their weapons overboard; and the hesitant legal process in Kenya and other places. We badly need to encourage the development of much better international legislation to enable the prosecution of suspects to be made easier. Introducing photographic evidence of weaponry being thrown overboard in certain designated areas in prosecuting a criminal offence might be one way of doing it.

Of course it is true, as others have said, that the long-term solution to this problem lies in the establishment of a much firmer Government in Somalia, but other, wider things can be done in the mean time before we achieve a major improvement in that field. We heard a moment ago from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, about the Strait of Malacca. Somalia is, of course, not the only place in the world where maritime safety and security are challenged. Although to a lesser extent compared with Somalia, there are also significant piracy problems in Nigeria and off the coast of Indonesia.

I want to say a few words about the need for new initiatives to achieve a better maritime security picture worldwide, which includes ways of trying to improve the situation in Somalia. First, I am sure that there is a need to address the current gaps in the type of information that is collected on maritime flows. Currently, only commercial ships over 300 tonnes are required to use the automatic identification system transponders. These are gadgets that broadcast the basic information of a ship’s destination and cargo. If smaller ships, which are widely agreed to be most likely to be used to support illicit activities at sea, were required also to use these AIS transponders, that would significantly help to develop a comprehensive picture of maritime traffic.

Secondly, there is a need for better information sharing. There is a good deal of agreement that information is not shared as well as it could be and that there are far too many obstacles and difficulties in the sharing of information. There are political difficulties, largely because of the reluctance of some states, which we quite understand, to share information with certain participants in these sorts of difficulties—one does not need to mention names. There are legal difficulties with, for instance, data protection rules and restrictions over sharing information that arises from commercial sources or from criminal investigations. Here, again, we have problems with rules of engagement, which brings us back to the possibility of prosecutions.

Thirdly, there are technical difficulties that make it hard to share crucial information, such as the use of non-compatible or non-interoperable systems. Again, there has been reference to the lack of UAVs. I have been told in the past that there was a possibility of UAVs operating out of the Seychelles, on the return journey from the Gulf or wherever they have been, to be used in their journey back across the ocean.

We need new efforts to minimise these difficulties at both regional and international level and to increase information sharing on maritime flows and activities. With regard to Somalia, some good initiatives have already taken place. The European Union’s maritime security centre on the Horn of Africa and its Mercury web-based information tool, as well as the shared awareness and deconfliction mechanism, have already been extremely useful in improving the sharing of information, in breaking down some of the barriers and in fostering exchanges between the military and the shipping industry. My impression and my information are that the inclusion of the shipping industry in recent times has been very productive indeed.

Above all, we need to bring up to date the co-ordination of efforts to improve maritime security overall on a global basis. This does not, of course, mean that we need a new overarching structure—I believe that it can be done within existing structures—but we need different systems and assets to operate better together, whether at national, regional or international level, and a number of political, legal and technical changes need to be made. I hope that the Minister when he replies will accept that these necessary changes and improvements need to happen and that he will be able to tell us that a start on that will be made shortly.

Finally, I very much agree with what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Inge, said about this being a long haul. The international community must not sign off as a result of mission exhaustion. That would be absolutely fatal. This is a long haul and we must stick with it.