Saturday December 4, 2021
Somalia's Permanent Representative at the UN Abukar Osman (Baale)
NEW YORK (HOL) - Somalia has upped its calls for an end to a UN appointed body to fight piracy off the Somali waters noting it was no longer relevant since piracy had ended in the region.
Somalia's Permanent Representative at the UN Abukar Osman said Friday Somalia had accepted to only three months for the Somali Contact Group to wind up its operations.
Somalia ended its participation in the UN mandated group in 2020 following arguments that the continued deployment of military forces on Somali waters was aiding illegal fishing and intimidating Somali fisher folk including branding them as pirates and trying them in foreign lands including in Kenya.
"We believe that Security Council resolutions on piracy and armed robbery off the coast of Somalia have successfully achieved its intended objective," Osman said. "Today, there is no single piracy related incident off the coast of Somalia for the fourth consecutive year and with no single Piracy related hostages in Somalia, thanks to Federal Government of Somalia’s efforts in collaboration with the international community."
According to Osman, Somalia was ready to pursue bilateral maritime cooperation framework noting this was the only sustainable way to preserve gains made so far.
The Somali Contact Group came into being in 2009 at the height of piracy off the Somali waters. About a decade later, Somalia argues that the decline and end of piracy necessitates the withdrawal of international forces.
In his address to the Security Council of Friday, Osman said the "continuation of this militarization of our national and territorial waters is definitely an issue not linked to piracy or armed robbery off Somalia coasts."
There have been reports that some of the Somali fishermen were arrested by international forces, sent to Mombasa, Kenya for trial and sentenced in Seychelles on grounds that they were pirates.