The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) is organising the 15th edition of Capacity Building Senior Officers’ Meeting (CBSOM-2023) with the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP) at Gandhinagar, Gujarat from December 11 to 15, 2023. The objective of the meeting is to understand the updated situation of maritime piracy and armed robbery against ships in Asia, exchange each others’ experiences and evolve best practices to tackle such incidents with a collaborative approach from all the contracting parties.

Being the designated Indian Governor to ReCAAP, Director General Rakesh Pal had inaugurated the four-day meeting, which is being attended by international and national subject matter experts and speakers. A total of 19 international delegates from 15 countries are participating in the meeting. In addition, senior officials from the national stakeholders such as Indian Navy, major ports, State Maritime Boards, Directorate General of Shipping, including other maritime organisations, are participating in this meeting.

The ReCAAP is the first and only regional government-to-government agreement to enhance cooperation to suppress piracy. India became the 10th country to ratify the ReCAAP agreement enabling it to enter into force on September 4, 2006. Now, there are 21 countries contracting party to the ReCAAP agreement. Government of India has assigned the responsibility to the ICG for sharing of information on piracy to member countries and ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre, Singapore. The ICG had successfully co-hosted Capacity Building workshops in India with ReCAAP ISC in 2011, 2017 and 2019.