UNODC Global Maritime Crime Programme’s Maritime Rule of Law Exercise (MROLEX) I
Seychelles is honoured to have hosted the first ever MROLEX under the UNODC’s Global Maritime Crime Programme. We have here present, country teams from Seychelles, Mauritius and Kenya who have participated in this two-week exercise that comes to closure today.
The exercise has served to integrate key components of the criminal justice chain with regards to combatting illicit acts at sea. This ranges from detection of suspected vessels, efficient maritime interdiction, and the legal prosecution of these acts.
As such, participating country teams comprise of Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) watch-standers and operators, boarding teams for Maritime Law Enforcement (MLE), legal prosecutors for the application of the Law of the Sea, as well as maintenance personnel to ensure operationality and longevity of maritime infrastructure.
This exercise follows a series of trainings and table-top exercises that specialised in the aforementioned thematic areas. What this exercise affords to the country teams is an opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge acquired in previous UNODC trainings.
To this end, the MROLEX presented a simulated operation within which, participating country teams analyzed information from a regional centre to take action at sea at the national level, leading up to a successful legal finish and prosecution of illicit acts, all with maintenance considerations and the availability of operational vessels taken into account throughout.
Incorporating the roles of the Regional Maritime Information Fusion Centre in Madagascar and the Regional Centre for Operational Coordination here in Seychelles, such an exercise is key to understanding and fostering the roles to be fulfilled by national law enforcement agents, as well as the need for regional integration and cooperation in the face of looming illicit maritime activity.
The exercise was facilitated by UNODC’s team of traveling experts who have spent the last four months traveling across the east African region, and we are pleased that your long journey has concluded on the shores of Seychelles.
Next week, the UNODC team moves on to facilitate a second exercise for our French-speaking member states of the region – Comoros, Djibouti and Madagascar. We look forward to another successful and fruitful exercise.
With sincere gratitude to the US State Department Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, for its financial support for this event, and to our national counterparts for their important role in helping make this exercise a success. To all the UNODC facilitators and everyone who assisted in one way or another, thank you.
I hereby conclude the MROLEX I. Thank you all.