WFP Welcomes French Offer To Protect Ships From Somali Pirates

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) thanked
France
or its proposal to provide naval escorts to protect ships
carrying
food off the Horn of Africa from pirate attacks.



"We are grateful to the Government of France for this generous offer,
which
would reduce the threat of piracy and allow WFP to feed more hungry
people
in Somalia," said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran at UN
headquarters
in New York.



Sheeran also thanked the multinational coalition naval force off
Somalia
for its increased surveillance in recent months and said she hoped it
will
continue.



WFP and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) have jointly
appealed
for high-level international action to stamp out piracy in waters
off
Somalia, following a series of attacks including on two vessels that
had
just unloaded WFP food in Somalia. In 2005, an upsurge of piracy in
Somali
waters, including the hijacking of two ships contracted for WFP, forced
the
UN agency to suspend all deliveries by sea for some weeks.



Some 80 percent of WFP food assistance for Somalia moves by sea, and
pirate
attacks have threatened to cut WFP's main supply route,
jeopardizing
rations for the 1.2 million people WFP expects to be feeding by the end
of
2007. Overall, there were 17 pirate attacks on ships in waters off
Somalia
in the first half of 2007, compared with eight attacks in the same
period
last year.



The French proposal envisions a two-month period during which naval
vessels
would escort ships carrying WFP food assistance as they traverse
Somali
waters. Ships would be escorted to the entrance of Mogadishu port.



WFP is increasing its food distributions in Somalia so has to ship
more
food just as the stormy monsoon season is coming to an end, Sheeran
said.
Before the onset of the monsoon last June, increasing pirate attacks
had
cut by half the number of ships available to transport WFP food
supplies.
Without escorts, WFP fears the pirates will return as the heavy
monsoon
seas calm, allowing them to start hunting for ships again.



Most of the pirate assaults did not appear aimed at seizing cargo
but
rather designed to force ship owners to pay ransom for vessels and
crew
held hostage. The pirates are highly mobile, manning fast vessels and
using
satellite position-fixing gear to attack ships far out at sea,
sometimes
more than 200 nautical miles off the Somali coast.


WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency: on average, each year, we
give food to 90 million poor people to meet their nutritional needs,
including 58 million hungry children, in 80 of the world's poorest
countries. WFP - We Feed People.

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