Christian Bueger


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Inside the capacity building mess: Visiting MARSIC and EUCAP Nestor

DSC_0835Capacity building is one of the most important responses to curb piracy and other forms of maritime crime. The international community has long recognized this. If the majority of capacity building projects were initially concerned about the prosecution and detention of piracy suspects the emphasis has gradually shifted towards maritime security sector reforms, and developing regional integration mechanisms in information sharing and developing collective responses. Two important missions in this regards are the EU’s MARSIC project and the civilian CSDP mission EUCAP Nestor both headquartered in Djibouti City. Both form part of a complex thicket of projects and programs, many of which are on a bilateral level. Today I had the opportunity to learn more about both of these missions.

Together with the Project Implementation Unit of the International Maritime Organization MARSIC is the backbone of the training programme of the Djibouti Code of Conduct (DCoC), a regional agreement concerned about developing a joint response to piracy. MARSIC, one of the least known EU capacity-building projects, assists the DCoC countries in developing and delivering their training program. If the building of the Djibouti Regional Training Centre (DRTC), which is supposed to become the core regional facility where training is conducted, is, after four years, still under construction, MARSIC has brought the training programme to life. MARSIC’s training consultant explained to me today, how course contents are selected through a prioritization procedure with national training coordinators, course content is developed with partners such as the World Maritime University based in Sweden, and how they are delivered. Courses usually take place in local hotels, are run 5 days, and are comprised of morning lectures as well as a practical day. MARSIC also runs regular piracy exercises together with the national focal points using the VENUS platform, a training version of MERCURY. Together the aim of the project is to develop a community of skilled counter-piracy practitioners. To do so MARSIC also has plans to establish a research facility, a library and online resources, although implantation suffers from technical difficulties (such as internet access) and a lack of funding, for instance for library resources. How the DRTC will be run, once construction is completed also remains an open question. This concerns not only intellectual support but also long term funding. With the closure of the Project Implementation Unit of the IMO and MARSIC ending in summer 2015 the question remains how the centre will be supported in the long run. If IMO continues its everyday support through its Maritime Security division, in the long run the centre will require a permanent donor. Yet, there are also some good news. Training coordination will be soon taken over by a local staff member and there are many indications that the training and exercises show effect. Maritime crime is a transnational problem, it is hence pivotal that DCoC as the main project emphasizing a regional responses receives ongoing support.

My second meeting was with EUCAP Nestor. Nestor is a mission that runs since 2012 and was supposed to prep up the level of capacity-building provided. As I wrote in an earlier blog it was long a mission in “search of a mission” as it faced staffing problems and it was unclear what gaps Nestor was supposed to fill. Capacity building is, as I wrote in my last lessons learned paper, one of the areas in which coordination has more or less failed so far. When Nestor was introduced this enforced the multiplicity of activities, and, one is tempted to say, the chaos and over-activity in the area. During my meeting with a representative from Nestor I was re-assured that the mission is increasingly finding its place. Nestor conducts a rich training program and following a strategic review in 2013, Nestor has a new mandate and is increasingly focused on Somalia. Offices in Mogadishu and Hargeisa will soon be opened and seven weeks training courses are run for the different coast guards of the regional entities and the Federal government. The emphasis of Nestor has shifted to a 60:20:20 formula. 60% of the activities devoted to Somalia, 20% to Djibouti, the Seychelles, and Tanzania, and the last 20% for support to the region, e.g. in the frame of DCoC. Discussing the coast guarding course revealed the many practical challenges capacity building faces. My interlocutor described the course as a “basic one”. And basic indeed it is, as part of the course content are skills such as swimming, marching or handling cameras for evidence collection.

Capacity building is one of the areas that will require ongoing investments, not only to stop piracy, but also to fight other maritime crimes. Getting the region to act together, and making nations realize what economic potential the blue economy holds and why they should care about the maritime domain will be important objectives. The coordination of capacity building is a failure. And one does not have to be a pessimist to state that it will continue to be a mess. But perhaps coordination is not the biggest issue. As Michel Soula from NATO highlighted at this week’s maritime security workshop in Geneva, duplication under the conditions of the scarcity of resources can be a virtue. Then the true issue is that the diverse capacity building missions start to learn from each other, including practical lessons, such as how to implement courses, or share facilities. Rather than coordination, the second issue might be seen in contradiction, that is, in trying to avoid that the content of training and the support in institution building and law drafting do not contradict each other.


Counter-Piracy Week of CGPCS in Dubai

The 17th plenary of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS) and its working group meetings will take place in Dubai from the 26th to the 28th of October. At the plenary I will give a short talk that provides an overview over the key results of the Lessons Learned Project on the group. The future of the CGPCS and the current counter-piracy architecture will be a key issue on the agenda, as will be questions such as how to improve capacity building coordination, how to re-shape the High Risk Area and to ensure high alert of the shipping community. The meeting will be followed by the high level conference “Securing State Recovery: Sustaining Momentum at Sea, Confronting Instability on Land” during which I will be moderating the plenary panel on “Lessons Learned from Maritime Piracy in the Horn of
Africa and a Framework for Future Cooperation”.


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In the Field: What’s the Future of DCoC?

DCoCYesterday I met with representatives from the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to discuss the future of counter-piracy and lessons learned from it. A core issue was the  IMO-run Djibouti Code of Conduct Process (DCoC). DCoC is one of the major responses to Somali piracy that conducts capacity building in the region in order to ensure the building of institutions that can prevent a long term solution to piracy. The management of DCoC will be re-organized in the coming months, the specific Project Implementation Unit shut down and the work transferred to normal IMO desks. This is on the one hand a clear signal of  how mature the DCoC project has become, with one of the final steps, the opening of the training center in Djibouti to be completed this year. On the other hand this development questions whether in future sufficient attention and energy will be invested by the IMO to go further steps in the implementation of DCoC. The visit also allowed for a longer lessons learned interview with Phil Holihead of IMO which is forthcoming with the Lessons Learned Project of the CGPCS.  


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In the Field: The African Union and its Maritime Strategy

New AU HQ

African Union building

The African Union is increasingly become a lead actor in African Maritime Security. With the conclusion of the African Integrated Maritime Strategy (AIMS) the core challenge is now to implement the ambitious project of strengthening Africa’s blue economy and addressing maritime instability. To discuss the implementation and how the international community can assist the AU, I am travelling to Addis Ababa from the 12th to the 18th of June, for a range of consultations and conversations. I am also attending a workshop organized by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on the 16th and 17th which deals with the same manner. The workshop titled “African Approaches to Maritime Security: The AU and Continental Perspective” includes contributions by a range of African maritime security scholars and aims at evaluating the state of maritime security on the continent and identifying priorities.


In the Field: Contact Group Meeting in New York

CGPCS LogoFrom May 14th to 17th I am attending the counter-piracy week of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS). I primarily attend as a participant observer to further record and study the working practice of the CGPCS, its plenary and its working groups. During the week the reform of the group’s structure and the future of counter-piracy will be discussed. At a side event after the plenary meeting the initial results of the lessons learnt project of the CGPCS (see llp.piracy-studies.org) will be introduced and discussed. I will give a presentation in which I will present some initial findings with regards on the replicability of the CGPCS experience in other contexts.


In the Field: Consultation with NATO’s Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Center

20140506_183549To discuss and  finalize the process of a potential contribution of the Big Three for the Lessons Learned Project of the CGPCS I visited NATO’s Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Center (JALLC) in Lisbon, Portugal. The JALLC will most likely take the lead in compiling the lessons of the naval multilateral missions and the Shared Awareness and De-Confliction Mechanism (SHADE) by which the naval contributions in the Gulf of Aden and the wider Western Indian Ocean are coordinated.


In the Field: Visit to Northwood

NATO, Northwood, Image courtesy of NATO

Yesterday, I visited the Northwood Headquarters of NATO and EU NAVFOR near London to discuss the contribution of the “big three” multilateral naval operations in the fight against piracy to the Lessons Learned Project for the Contact Group. The Lessons Learned Project is a collaboration between Cardiff University, the EUISS, OBP and IPA tasked to capture the experience of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, to draw lessons from this experience, and ask whether the success of the Contact Group can be replicated to address other problematic situations. Further information is available here.

The meeting was very productive and there a promising prospects that NATO, EU NAVFOR and CMF will feed their experience on military coordination into the Lessons Learned Project. The way that operations are organized in the Gulf of Aden and the broader Western Indian Ocean and navies from around the world collaborate to prevent piracy is one of the most fascinating part of counter-piracy. Through mechanisms such as SHADE, the IRTC, MSCHOA, and the Mercury system international navies not only are successful in stopping piracy, but have found a unique way of military coordination making counter-piracy a truly global effort. Understanding how this cooperation works and how it could be replicated in other situations will be a major component of the Lessons Learned Project.


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In the Field: Conference on “Good order at sea off Eastern Africa: Beyond piracy”

From 18.9.-.20.9.2013, the 3rd International Conference on Strategic Theory in Dar es Salam, Tanzania  will explore which lessons can be learned from Somali piracy and how maritime security governance in the region can be strengthened. The conference attended by academics, defense experts and maritime security practitioners is organized by the Faculty of Military Science, Stellenbosch University and the Royal Danish Defence College.

At the conference I will give a presentation titled “Learning from Piracy. Challenges of Maritime Security Governance”. More information is available here.