The Special Envoy for the Oceans of the United Nations Secretary-General, H.E. Mr. Peter Thomson, formally opened the SafeSeas Symposium on Capacity Building for Maritime Security on the 2nd of March. The goal of the high-level symposium is to rethink the strategy and methods of capacity building in the Western Indian Ocean region.
As H.E. Thomson highlighted, “sustainable development is not possible without security”. Maritime security hence is an important part of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 14 on the Oceans.
He thanked the SafeSeas Project for living up to its commitment made at the 2017 UN Oceans Conference. As H.E. Thomson stated,
“I am delighted to see the commitment of the SafeSeas project implemented with the development of the best practice toolkit on maritime security capacity building. As well as through the organisation of this important symposium.”
He continued in emphasizing the importance of capacity building and the contribution that the SafeSeas best practice toolkit “Mastering Maritime Security” can make. As the Special Envoy suggested:
“Despite a growing number of capacity building initatives currently underway in the Western Indian Ocean and other regions of the world, there remains much to do in our collaboration to identify the best ways for all states to ensure greater maritime security so the sustainable development of ocean resources can be developed to its full promise. In this regard, I am confident that the best practice tool kit […] will be an important new resource for us all. I am confident that this Symposium will serve as an important step forward to the sharing of experiences in capacity building in consideration of the best practices.”
At the one-day Symposium over 60 participants from different states and international organisations, including a range of ambassadors, will discuss the prospects of organising capacity building differently.