【Piracy】 Global piracy incident report for 2022 by IMB

IMB has published global piracy report which period of 1 January to 31 December 2022.

The Summary of the report is below.

The ICC IMB’s annual report recorded 115 incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships in 2022 – compared to 132 in 2021.

The half of them occurring in Southeast Asian waters, particularly in the Singapore Straits with 38 incidents, which continue to rise. 

While incidents in Singapore Straits are considered low level opportunistic crimes and fall under the definition of armed robbery, crews continue to be at risk. In the 38 reported incidents, two crew were threatened and four were taken hostage for the duration of the incident. It has also been reported that in at least three incidents a gun was used to threaten the crew.

• Incident in Gulf of Guinea was 19 in 2022 which was reduced from 35 incident in 2021. However, IMB warns that there are still piracy risks. For example, an incident occurred in Nov. 2022 that a Ro-Ro vessel was commandeered by pirates, around 28nm SW of Turtle Islands, Sierra Leone. All crew were taken hostage and the pirates tried to navigate the vessel through shallow waters resulting in the vessel running aground.

No incident by Somali pirates was reported in 2022.

Note by editor: According to UKMTO website, some vessel attacked incidents and suspicious boat approach were reported in South of Red Sea and/or coast of Yemen. We assume such incidents were not counted as piracy incident in IMB's annual report because the report information could not be confirmed, or these incidents were not considered as piracy related. 

Please refer below link.

https://www.icc-ccs.org/index.php/1324-sustained-efforts-needed-as-global-piracy-incidents-hit-lowest-levels-in-decades