Námořní pirátství v Guinejském zálivu a jeho možná řešení

This thesis‘ main focus is on maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. It provides a definition of maritime piracy, characterises the types of attacks and evaluates the current state of global piracy. The situation in the Gulf of Guinea and south-east Asia is the worst at the moment. Thanks to its oil reserves, the Gulf of Guinea is a strategic region on a global level, thus its maritime security should be of interest of the rest of the world. This thesis also examines the economic costs of piracy with the aim to evaluate its impact. Although reliable data is scarce, there are estimations saying that the global cost of maritime piracy can reach up to 20 billion USD. There are also other negative effects of piracy on regional development, such as on fishing, tourism, or decrease in the frequency of some ports, which contributes the most to some West-African government revenue. A crucial part of this thesis is the analysis of general anti-piracy measures and those implemented in the case of Somali piracy off the Horn of Africa. The focus is on short-term measures that lead to an immediate reduction of pirate activity such as naval presence and implementation of contracted security personnel. Subsequently, measures implemented against maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea are analysed. After a comparison of results of these analyses, recommendations for future measures for the Gulf of Guinea are deduced. Specific characteristics of the Gulf of Guinea are taken into account. It is mainly recommended to increase the budget of local navies, create a safe maritime transit corridor, expand the safe anchorage network and increase the percentage of ships with contracted security on board. Furthermore, it seems necessary to increase the incident reporting, as the fact that more than 50 % of all incidents are not reported makes a thorough analysis of the piracy problem difficult.