At the 2014 Atlantic Dialogues in Marrakesh, Morocco, Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham spoke on the “Stopping Organized Crime at Sea” panel.

Pham described the factors that enable maritime crime, including the proliferation of vulnerable targets (cargo ships, oil tankers, or other goods traveling by sea) and a general lack of security in especially West African waters such as the Gulf of Guinea. Maritime criminals have taken advantage of the permissive environment by “scaling up” from small, local operations to larger, more organized ones.