Ghana holds an Inter-Departmental Meeting of ECOWAS to address illegal marine activity.

Ghana is hosting an inter-departmental conference of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to debate the draught Supplementary Act intended at combating illegal marine operations in the cub-region.

Participants at the four-day meeting in Accra will examine the Act, which is intended to increase international collaboration in the fight against marine crime and to improve law enforcement in member countries.

Mr. Serge Kouadio Koffi, the Programme Officer, IT and Communication Directorate of External Relations, ECOWAS Commission, said in a working document made available to the Ghana News Agency in Tema that the draught Supplementary Act was being developed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) as part of the European Union-funded Support to West Africa Integrated Maritime Security (SWAIMS).

The SWAIMS initiative aims to assist member nations in enhancing the implementation of the rule of law at sea and on land in order to increase prosecution of piracy and other maritime crimes.

It also intends to concentrate on the creation of a regional maritime legal framework, as well as its distribution and sensitization measures, in order to ensure that new maritime criminal law is created and submitted for approval.

Mr. Koffi stated that the project would focus on the creation of memorandums of agreement and Standard Operating Procedures for the prosecution of marine crime suspects.

He stated that the summit would ensure that member nations could combat maritime crimes like as piracy, armed robbery at sea, and trafficking in narcotics, people, and weapons, as well as secure coastal states' waterways.