New Delhi: The Indian Coast Guard will host 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) from December 11-15 at Gandhinagar, Gujarat to combat maritime piracy.

Director General of Indian Coast Guard Rakesh Pal will be inaugurating the four-day meeting participated by international and national subject matter experts speakers, as per a release issued by the Indian government's defence wing.

ReCAAP is the first and only regional government-to-government agreement to promote and enhance cooperation to suppress piracy and armed robbery against ships in Asia.

India became the 10th country to ratify the ReCAAP agreement enabling the Agreement to enter into force on September 4, 2006. Now, 21 countries are contracting parties to the ReCAAP agreement.

The Indian government has assigned responsibility of ReCAAP Focal Point to the Indian Coast Guard for sharing of information on Piracy to member countries and ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre, Singapore, as per the official release.

Earlier, too, the Indian Coast Guard successfully co-hosted Capacity Building workshops in India with ReCAAP ISC in 2011, 2017 and 2019.

The objective of this meeting is to understand the updated situation of maritime piracy and armed robbery against ships in Asia, exchange each other's experiences, and evolve best practices to tackle such incidents with a collaborative approach from all the contracting parties.

A total of 19 International delegates from 15 countries will be participating in the meeting. In addition, senior officials from the national stakeholders such as the Indian Navy, major ports, State Maritime Boards, Directorate General of Shipping including other maritime organisations are also expected to participate in this meeting, the release said.