Ver Angola

Politics

To protect the oceans, it is necessary to combat maritime piracy, says João Lourenço

The President of the Republic, João Lourenço warned this Monday that the world will not be able to achieve the objectives related to the protection of the oceans if it does not deal with maritime piracy, namely in the Gulf of Guinea and the Horn of Africa.

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"We are convinced that we will not be able to achieve the objectives related to the protection of the marine ecosystem if we do not courageously assume the need to strengthen the maritime defense and security capacity strongly threatened by groups of modern sea pirates who carry out their terrorist activity on the main routes seas, seriously threatening international trade and security in the oceans", said João Lourenço, speaking in the plenary of the United Nations Ocean Conference, which began this Monday in Lisbon.

The head of state therefore defended the need to "extend international cooperation with the countries of these regions, in order to provide them with the capacity to face this global threat".

"The importance of the oceans for the regular flow of goods, their impact on world trade and on stabilizing the prices of essential goods and raw materials, as well as the normal functioning of the economy," he said, underlining the "core importance and the unavoidable need for the peaceful use of the oceans as a guarantee of survival in humanly dignified conditions for populations from all over the planet".

The waters of the Gulf of Guinea, which stretch for thousands of kilometers from Angola to southern Senegal, are among the most dangerous in the world due to piracy.

In recent years, these incidents taking place off the coast of the two biggest oil producers in sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria and Angola, have disrupted shipping lanes and cost billions of dollars in damage.

According to the most recent International Maritime Department (IMB) annual report, released in January, the number of acts of maritime piracy dropped to 132 in 2021, the lowest level in the last 27 years, driven by the drop in attacks in West Africa.

Even with the reduction in the number of piracy attacks, the Gulf of Guinea is the region where there are more kidnappings in the world at maritime level, having been recorded, last year, the kidnapping of 57 crew members of ships that cross the area, being above the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Somalia, until now considered the main piracy area in Africa, according to the same report.

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