The Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, commonly abbreviated as CGPCS, is an ad-hoc formed international governance mechanism (International Contact Group) established in New York on January 14, 2009, to facilitate the discussion and coordination of actions among states and organizations to suppress Somali piracy.
To date, more than 60 countries and international organizations have become part of this forum, all of which are working towards the prevention of piracy off the Somali coast.
The CGPCS meets in two formats a bi-annual plenary and working groups as well as several ad-hoc sub-groups.
The starting point for the project was that the CGPCS represents a unique as well as very successful type of governance mechanism and that this experience requires to be recorded.
A Lessons Learned Consortium was formed comprising the NGO Oceans Beyond Piracy [2], the European Union Institute of Security Studies, and the Counter-Piracy Governance Project at Cardiff University [3].