A new Maritime and Other Offences Bill is set to be laid before Parliament to close legal gaps that have left Ghana unable to prosecute piracy, as lawmakers move to respond to a sharp rise in attacks on Ghanaian waters including an incident last month in which 71 fishermen were left stranded at sea by armed pirates.
Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Security and Intelligence, disclosed the planned legislation at a three-day stakeholder forum in Accra convened by the National Counter Terrorism Fusion Centre (NCTFC) with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to review Ghana’s National Framework for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism and Terrorism.
The timing is pointed. On February 26 and 27, fishermen from Gomoa Nyanyano and Senya Bereku in the Central Region were attacked by armed pirates, reportedly Nigerian nationals, who seized outboard motors and personal belongings before fleeing. The Ghana Navy mounted a rescue operation and recovered all 71 men, but the incident exposed the limits of Ghana’s maritime enforcement capacity.
Those limits are partly legal. Ghana’s piracy definition under the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 does not conform to Article 101 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a gap that has undermined the country’s ability to successfully prosecute piracy cases. The problem is not new. Ghana arrested eight pirates aboard the vessel MT Mariam in 2016, but was forced to repatriate them to Nigeria for trial because its own statutes were inadequate.
“We currently cannot prosecute piracy because our rather outdated law does not give a definition that makes it possible for us to successfully prosecute,” Dr Agyeman-Rawlings said at the forum. “When offences are committed at sea, authorities are forced to use other charges instead of piracy, which is clearly not good enough considering recent developments.”
The proposed bill would repeal the outdated provisions and align Ghana’s law with UNCLOS standards. It would also strengthen coordination among security agencies and, according to Dr Agyeman-Rawlings, improve investor and operator confidence in Ghana’s ports and shipping lanes, which she described as central to the country’s ambition to serve as a logistics hub for the West African sub-region.
Brigadier General Dr Timothy Ba-Taa-Banah, Director of the NCTFC, said Ghana’s record of zero terrorist attacks on home soil was the product of deliberate strategy and must not breed complacency. He flagged the growing use of artificial intelligence in disinformation campaigns and the increasing sophistication of terrorist financing networks as emerging threats requiring continuous review of existing frameworks.
Miss Shaima Hussein, Deputy Resident Representative of the UNDP, said tackling violent extremism demanded attention to its economic roots, including unemployment, inequality and social exclusion among young people, alongside legislative and security measures.
The Gulf of Guinea (GoG) accounts for the majority of maritime kidnappings globally, and insurance providers classify the region as a high-risk zone, a designation that raises shipping premiums and feeds through to higher import costs for Ghanaian households and businesses.
