Synthèse de docs piraterie Somalie (en anglais)

English oral presentation

Introduction:

Even though sea piracy has been a global problem for centuries, this is not a phenomenon of the past contrary to what people believe nowadays. Indeed, sea piracy is an actual major problem for a lot of countries. As a matter of fact, many of them are struggling to fight against this phenomenon but still there is progress.

The first of the five documents under study is a bar chart from CBC News on the piracy worldwide in January 2018. The second document under study is a documentary from ABC News from 2019 about the intervention of the American coast guards busting a narco submarine with drugsmugglers. The third document under study is an article from the website GISReportOnline published in 2022 called “The rise of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea”. The fourth document is an article published by OceanUSLive called “US Navy stops pirate attack” about the method employed by the US Navy to stop suspects. The fifth and last document is an article from the NBCNews website called “Security firms join fight against Somali pirates”.

All these documents are raising the following question: How does countries and more particularly USA and Somalia counter sea piracy?

To find an answer we are going to cut the question in half, in one hand we will analyse the three first document we referred to lately by seeing the danger of sea piracy in US and on Somalian coasts and on the other hand we are going to look at the two following documents to see how US and Somalia each  battle against sea piracy.

First part:

Despite the fact that security has improved lately everywhere in the world and most particularly in the United States. Thus, the United States marine safety has been reinforced and illegal activities at sea are being regulated. For instance, as shown on the bar chart in the first document, there is in South America since January 2018 approximately 25 reported sea piracy crimes; this figure might seem low but only the reported crimes are indicated and this is why there could be plenty of more of them. In addition, the bar chart indicates that that sea piracy attacks are generally assaults with a demand for ransom, kidnapping, robbery etc… As a result, there is a high level of violence and the assaults are often deadly.

Indeed, the second document is a documentary that shows a narco submarine bust in the American waters. As the journalist tells it: ”pirates threw their weapons, identified as AK-47 rifles, one propelled grenade”. This fact reinforces the idea of violence in sea piracy as already mentioned. In addition to this fact, the ABC News Report tells us that 4 smugglers tried to enter US illegally in possession of 12000 pounds of cocaine and multiple fire guns.

The third document under study indicates us that over the last 15 years, the Somalian maritime area has become one of the world’s hotspots for maritime piracy. In 2020, out of the 135 maritime kidnappings worldwide, 130 took place in the Gulf of Guinea, the highest number ever registered in the region. A previous high was reached in 2019, when 121 seafarers were abducted. In the first four months of 2021 alone, there were 40 kidnapped crew incidents worldwide. The attacks in this area are generally Armed attacks, vessel boarding and hijacking, kidnappings and assassination of crew members became increasingly frequent. These sharp rise pirate attacks are very alarming and Somalia has to take measures to decrease this phenomenon.

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