News

Leading international experts on piracy are meeting at Dalhousie University, July 24-27, to analyze and make recommendations on key issues not currently being adequately addressed. The working group is part of the Dalhousie Marine Piracy Project (DMPP), a two-year project on global maritime piracy funded by the TK Foundation and led by the Marine Affairs Program in the Faculty of Management.

The group includes experts from the legal, naval, commercial shipping, academic and NGO communities. It will focus on the problems of governance frameworks, the evolution of piracy as organized crime and its business model, and the issue of child pirates and the criminal exploitation of juveniles. The last is a particularly serious issue that is being ignored or marginalized by current antipiracy initiatives. Sen. Roméo Dallaire, a member of the working group, will speak at a luncheon on July 25 on “The New Paradigm for Conflict Resolution – The issue of child piracy, and the use of children by organized crime”.

Dalhousie University has been able to bring together experts from a wide variety of disciplines to provide a focused, integrated and holistic analysis of what is currently one of the world's major problems. While the deliberations of the working group will be private, the resulting reports and recommendations will be widely disseminated to governments and international organizations. These reports should provide an innovative perspective on dealing with piracy, and more importantly, recommend appropriate steps to prevent maritime piracy outbreaks from occurring in the future.