Britain earmarks $3.56M for anti-piracy

Britain says it has earmarked $3.56 million to support U.N. anti-piracy efforts that seek to build prisons and upgrade the justice system in Somalia.

Britain earmarks $3.56M for anti-piracy

LONDON, Jan. 24 (UPI) — Britain says it has earmarked $3.56 million to support U.N. anti-piracy efforts that seek to build prisons and upgrade the justice system in Somalia.

Most of the funding is targeted for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s Post Trial Transfer Program, which is helping to construct a new prison in Puntland designed to hold convicted pirates in facilities that meet international standards, British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt said Monday.

Despite progress last year in reducing the number of pirate attacks on international shipping off the coast of Somalia, the British official warned the effort is hardly “mission accomplished.”

Progress is fragile and reversible,” he cautioned. “One-hundred-eight hostages remain in pirate hands, often subjected to terrible conditions with no knowledge of when, or even if, they will be released,” Burt said in address to the U.K. Chamber of Shipping.

“So we must stay the course; take the opportunity to press home our advantage and make the waters off the coast of Somalia safe once again.”

He noted that 2012 saw a “dramatic decline” in pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia, falling 80 percent from the 2011 level to 35 last year.

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Source: UPI.