The men who work aboard the ships in the global commercial maritime industry are a reticent group. Moving cargo by sea is hard work that offers long hours and few thanks, shaping the deckhands into people who avoid complaining while focusing on the job to be done.
Still, the Rev. Stephen Miller has witnessed a lot of trauma from ship crews over the years , and he is succinct about what raises the anxiety levels of the seafarers he meets across Asia.
“If they are leaving to go toward Africa or East Africa , they are worried because of the hostage situation,” says Miller, the Hong Kong-based East Asia regional director for The Mission to Seafarers, an international Christian charity serving merchant crews.
Those worries are born e out in a recently released report, which provides a stark reminder about how deadly large swathes of the high seas remain in the second decade of the 21st century. While the number of incidents involving pirates around the world declined in 2017 compared with the previous year, the number increased off the coasts of Africa, South America and in the Caribbean, according to the annual ” State of Maritime Piracy” report released by One Earth Future, a nonprofit organization that studies piracy. The NGO’s Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP) program released the report.
“Pirate activity in 2017 clearly demonstrates that pirate groups retain their ability to organize and implement attacks against ships transiting the region,” says Maisie Pigeon, the report’s lead author. OBP defines incidents as including attacks, hijackings and kidnappings.
Of particular concern: The number of incidents in the Horn of Africa between ships and pirates sharply increased in 2017 compared with the previous year, according to both the OBP report and the International Maritime Bureau’s annual report on piracy. Piracy incidents in the Horn doubled in 2017, particularly off the coast of Somalia, a focus of international headlines on piracy as recently as 2012. Incidents also were recorded off the coast of Yemen, a country torn since 2011 by a political crisis that has led to a protracted civil war and an impotent government.
“Pirates never went away,” says Pigeon, noting that in recent years many seagoing criminals increasingly moved ashore to focus on illicit activity with drugs, arms and wildlife.
Elsewhere, piracy remains a problem on the other side of Africa, according to the OBP report. Threats remain in the Gulf of Guinea despite countermeasures implemented by coastal states such as Nigeria and maritime security companies.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, pirate incidents increased by 160 percent in 2017 compared with the previous year, according to OBP. The report singles out Venezuela and Suriname as countries that experienced upticks in piracy.
The surges in pirate incidents off Africa and in the Western Hemisphere come after years of good news about improved safety on the open waters for the shipping industry, which by one estimate generates more than $500 billion annually in revenue. Attacks on commercial ships by pirates have been on the decline overall, thanks to better tracking, more responsive navies and increased readiness by the crews aboard cargo ships.
The news is especially upbeat across Asia, where pirates have long bedeviled the commercial maritime industry. The region still accounts for the greatest number of pirate incidents in the world, but it saw an overall drop in reported incidents of 23 percent in 2017 from 2016 and a 51 percent decrease from 2015, according to the OBP report. Kidnap-for-ransom incidents, for example, decreased by 80 percent, according to the report.
Cooperation between countries in the region has been key to fighting pirates, says Pigeon, who points to the agreement between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines to launch joint patrols in waters known to harbor pirates as key to lowering the overall number of attacks.
Type of maritime vessel also affects whether a ship may come under attack, Miller says.
“The seafarers we see in Hong Kong are not going to be affected a lot by this because they are on big container ships,” he says. “Most of this is happening on small tankers where they are coming out, they’re robbing the ships, the ships are slow-moving ships, the guys will come on board , they’ll stick a gun in the face of the crew and they’ll say, ‘Give us what you got onboard. ‘”
What is the lesson from 2017? Increased vigilance and communication, Pigeon says. A perception of increased safety may have lulled some governments into false security, she says. NATO wrapping up its naval missions in the Indian Ocean also may have encouraged pirates, she adds.
Piracy is “a crime of opportunity,” she says. “Criminals are increasingly adaptive and that needs to be factored in.”
Miller is just as direct on how to fight pirates: “The one thing that happens that will put pirates off is if the punishments fit the crime. How many of these people do get taken to court? Or is it just that they are chased off?”
More from U.S. News
Learn More About the Philippines
Piracy at Sea in 2017 Increased Off Africa, Across Latin America originally appeared on usnews.com
