The shipowning industry rejects the hypothesis to prevent the payment of the ransoms to the pirates



who have seized ships to held the aim to obtain the release of the marine ones hostage. It emphasizes the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), the shipowning association that it represents beyond 80% of world-wide the mercantile fleet, commenting the outcome of the intergovernmental conference on the held Somalia thursday slid in the United Kingdom.

For the ICS, if the payment of the ransoms will be prohibited or penalized, many marine and many shipowning companies will comprehensibly refuse to navigate in the danger area, with meaningful implications for the great part of the world-wide commerce that journeys in the western part of the Indian Ocean, included about 40% of the world-wide transport of oil.

The precise ICS that the shipowning industry receives with favor the assumed engagements in order to try to restore the governmental authority and the civil society in Somalia and remembers that the absence of a state authority that it exercises own functions is one of the main causes of rapes attacks of the pirates somalis against the international traffic marine, assaults who up to now have caused the killing of beyond 60 marine ones and the seizure of 4.000 marine ones. However the ICS is worried that in order to face these topics they will want years to us, if not ten-year-old.

"The main worry of the industry - the ICS evidences - is of humanitarian character and the shipowners have the duty to safeguard their crews and their families. When the marine ones are taken hostage - the association finds - the inability of the international community to eliminate piracy or to save the hostages it does not leave the shipowners other choice that to pay the ransoms. To the shipowners other alternative would not remain that to abandon their crews to months, if not years, of ill-treatments, between which the torture and the homicide, result that already has obtained when the ransoms are not paid".

The International Chamber of Shipping emphasizes moreover that international the shipowning industry finds with a sure worry that the results of the conference on the Somalia do not seem to include some political engagement or new actions in order in the near future to eliminate or to reduce in meaningful way the plague of piracy somali.

"The governments - accusation the ICS - must assign to their military forces the task to attack the pirates and to assure that the resources are maintained military necessary in order to continue to defend the mercantile ships in the best possible way. Little mention - the association explains - seem to be made to the obligations of the governments regarding the protection of the mercantile ships and of their crews from piracy in the within of the Convention of the United Nations on the right of the sea and the industry it is worried that the current level of attacks of the pirates is something that the governments can be disposed to continue to tolerate because the ships are not visible and to the center of the attentions even if they transport about 90% of the world-wide commerce".

According to the ICS, "to abdicate to own responsibilities transferring them to private armed guards to which the navigation companies now making resort in always increasing number in absence of an adapted protection to support it does not constitute a sustainable solution over the long term in order to eliminate piracy".