Some 24 participants from Comoros, Djibouti, Jordan, Kenya, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritius, Mozambique, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Federal Government of Somalia, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania and Yemen are attending a three-week Maritime Law Enforcement course, at the Border Guards Maritime Training Institute, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (15 March to 2 April), thanks to sponsorship from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The course is being conducted under the auspices of the Djibouti Code of Conduct (DCoC) and the Djibouti Regional Training Centre with the support and joint supervision of the IMO Secretariat’s Kiruja Micheni, and the Border Guard’s Captain Jebreel Al-Hazmi. The course covers internationally-recognised best practices for planning and conduct of law enforcement operations at sea, from a regional perspective and includes theory and practice in planning and ex-ecution of maritime law enforcement using simulators, with instruction delivered by trainers from Saudi Arabia, the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operations Training Centre (NMIOTC), and the EU MARSIC Project.

The training course was officially opened by Staff General Badr Bin Hamdi Al-Jabri, Commander of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Border Guards in the Mecca region and is the fourth course sponsored by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Djibouti Code of Conduct is entering a new phase with countries in the region taking greater responsibility for implementing and coordinating its counter piracy activities.