‘Ships Can Be Dangerous Too’: Coupling Piracy and Maritime Terrorism in Southeast Asia’s Maritime Security Framework (2004) (original) (raw)
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Contemporary Maritime Piracy in Southeast Asia: History, Causes and Remedies - By Adam J. Young
Asian Politics & Policy, 2009
Despite its often glamorized and sentimental portrayals in popular media, exemplified in the recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise, maritime piracy has always been an extremely violent and callous form of criminal activity. In extreme cases, pirates are known to kill everyone on board, as well as scuttling the vessels they pillage, thus ensuring that an already jurisdictionally problematic offence also becomes a juridically difficult one to collect evidence against. For these reasons, piracy has historically been readily accepted by international lawyers as an example par excellence of an offence or crime against the international ordre public, with pirates themselves being regarded as hostes humani generis, literally meaning the 'enemies of all mankind'. In the post-9/11 era, piracy has also become entangled in wider maritime security issues in the so-called 'war on terror'. The pair of complementary titles reviewed here examines the Southeast Asian aspect of the piracy phenomenon from multiple disciplinary perspectives, befitting the nature of their publishing houses, the Institute of South East Asian Studies (ISEAS) based at the National University of Singapore, and the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) at the University of Leiden, in The Netherlands. The legal perspectives on this issue are therefore tangentially, rather than directly, involved in the discussion. Nevertheless, these monographs combine well to give us an excellent picture of contemporary Southeast Asian maritime piracy issues. Both treatments of this subject agree that the definitions and meanings used to describe 'piracy', whether legal or otherwise, seldom do justice to the nature and complexity of this activity, as well as its participants. This is especially true of Southeast Asian piracy. Young notes that '(p)iracy includes everything from petty theft to the hijacking of entire vessels, and pirates can be anyone from opportunistic fishermen, to members of syndicates and even rogue military units.' (p.13) In terms of their respective approaches to the common theme of Southeast Asian piracy, Young emphasizes the need to tackle pirate and terrorist acts separately, from the conceptual, policy, legal and
Addressing the Persistent Problem of Piracy and Sea Robbery in Southeast Asia
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Individual and multilateral efforts by Southeast Asian states to improve maritime security over the past decade have achieved significant progress. But the problem of piracy and sea robbery persists. While the majority of reported incidents are comparatively minor, the overall number of attacks has risen over the past five years and has included hijackings for cargo theft by criminal syndicates and kidnappings for ransom by groups linked to Islamic militants. In response to the rising number of reported incidents, regional states have enacted measures to improve maritime security in areas under their jurisdiction. Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, for example, have agreed to launch coordinated naval patrols in the Sulu Sea. Further measures are required, however: Indonesia needs to operationalize a national coast guard; regional states need to tackle the land-based root causes of the problem; external powers should step up capacity building support; and ASEAN needs to adopt a more pro-active role in the fight against piracy and sea robbery.
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Piracy and Terrorism in Maritime Southeast Asia: the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia, 2018
According to the United Nations, the most dangerous seas in the world are in SEA. In particular, the narrow waterways between Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, and Malaysia are among the world’s major maritime routes and also weakly-controlled small islands in between and around these waterways that are hiding places for pirates make the region highly susceptible to piracy. Therefore, piracy has become a growing regional security concern. In response to piracy, governments in this region have enacted and enforced counter-piracy measures through domestic and joint efforts. As a result, there has been a decrease in the total number of piracy attacks in SEA.
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Neverending Story? Problem of Maritime Piracy in Southeast Asia
The article describes the issue of maritime piracy in Southeast Asia and tries to answer the question concerting possibility of eradicating this phenomenon from the Asian waters, as it happened in the Horn of Africa. Since the Somali pirates activity has been reduced significantly, the paper analyses if it is possible to repeat this success in Southeast Asia. This question is ever so important because of the highest risk of maritime piracy attacks is in that region since 2012, especially in the Indonesian waters. The article also describes chosen reasons of maritime piracy in Asia, which are chiefly related to geography, socio-political factors, and economy, for instance: the problem of poverty, corruption and effective control of such huge territory. The article emphasises that the conditions in Southeast Asia differ from the Somali ones; as a result, it may be difficult to repeat successfully the anti-piracy efforts which eliminated piracies from the Somali waters almost entirely.
Politico Legal Dynamics of Seaborne Piracy in the Pelagic Waters of South East Asia
The Rest: Journal of Politics and Development, 2022
Geopolitical location places the seaborne piracy infested pelagic waters of South East Asia (SEA) astride a very different façade of international relations and maritime legal regime of the littoral states disturbing the commercial route and the energy lifelines. The littoral states of the SEA are the immediate stake holders who have a primary role to play in addressing the challenges arising out of this seaborne menace. The present study specifically includes three littoral states of the SEA as representative references, for examination against the backdrop of UNCLOS regime and they are Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. The present work offers a comparative analysis of anti-piracy legal regime of the above selected maritime states who are also the ASEAN states. They all belong to the group of high-income and middle-income developing economies, as categorised by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank). These nation states have maritime, economic and strategic interests in the oceans and seas adjacent to them. Another striking commonality is that, most of them are poised to industrialized their economies, can be observed from the relatively high-average annual growth rate in the industrial sectors vis-a-vis the agricultural sectors of their respective economies, since the 1990s. Hitherto, the issues raised are, what are the stake holds of the concerned states? Is the prevailing legal regime adequate enough to maintain the maritime stake holds? Are the littoral states triggered to ‘use of force’ law by post-9/11 developments related? It also addresses how regional and national actors are functioning differently within the scope of a discourse of international law and agencies like UN, ASEAN, etc.
In addition to facilitating peaceful trade and economic development, sovereign territory, territorial waters and international waters are being used by various criminal groups that pose threats to governments, businesses and civilian population in Southeast Asia. Nonstate criminal maritime activities were not receiving appropriate attention as they were overshadowed by traditional military security challenges. Yet more and more frequently, the non-traditional actors challenge lines of communication, jeopardize access to strategic resources, complicate traditional defence tasks, and harm the environment. Understanding the nature of non-traditional threats, and the ways to combat them, requires international legal, historical and political science analysis within a united problem-oriented approach. A fair critique to pure interest, power and knowledge -based theories of regime formation was developed by E.K. Leonard's 1 , who explained the evolution of the international system from the global governance perspective. The present study is based on the premise that pure nation-state approaches are incapable of providing a theoretical ground for addressing the growing influence of international criminal networks in South East Asia. From an international relations theory perspective, the author of this study agrees with D.Snidal 2 that the hegemonic stability theory has "limits" and is insufficient in describing modern challenges to sustainable international security regime, including non-traditional threats, where collective action is more efficient from an interest and capability standpoint. At the same time the author of this study does not share the viewpoint on "marginalization" 3 of international law in current international order due to its fragmentation and regionalization 4 and "global power shifts" 5 . The United Nations, as a global institution at the top of the vertical hierarchy of international legal order, and the EU as an example of "self-contained" regime along with other subsystems like South East Asia may have different approaches to global governance, international constitutional order, or particular cases such as the measure of infringement of human rights when targeting individuals suspected of terrorist links. Yet international law remains the key part of the Asian and global security regime. The hypothesis of this study is that the "void of governance" regime in territorial and international waters provides lucrative environment for developing terrorism, piracy, environmental degradation, and other criminal activities that pose untraditional threats to the regional security. This "void of governance" regime can be caused by either, or both, de jure or de facto insufficient control over particular marine territories.
Piracy and Maritime Terrorism; Serious Perils to Sea Security
Global Strategic & Securities Studies Review, 2020
In today's global environment, security concerns are posturing grave and animated challenges towards domestic as well as global stability. Two particular issues, piracy and maritime terrorism, are one of the modern challenges having worldwide bearing on maritime trade and security. The huge and mostly uncontrolled maritime zone permits pirates and terrorists to achieve their ulterior motives. To device effective countermeasures against them, it must be defined whether or not a nexus is forming between pirates and terrorists as the matching physiognomies make it perplexing to divergent them away from each other. The research paper examines the manifestation of piracy and maritime terrorism, the existing national/ international legal framework on the matter and practices adopted worldwide to address the issue. By appraising the legal instruments, copious useful recommendations are presented to enhance their effectiveness in fighting piracy and maritime terrorism from intimidating ...
Maritime Threats to the South and Southeast Asia: Scope for a Regional Agreement
Kathmandu School of Law Review, 2017
Piracy has continued to be a thriving criminal activity in the seas and pirates are considered to be the enemy of mankind. Recent reports show that more than half of the piracy reports reported have been from the area of Southeast Asia. Along with piracy, armed robbery, illicit trafficking, and smuggling have broadened and deepened the nature and scope of this threat. The Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS III) 1982, SUA Convention, 1988 and the regional agreements establish the legal frameworks then several organizations have enhanced enforcement measures in the suppression of sea perils. This paper attempts to examine the drawbacks in the existing legal framework and maritime security arrangements and to provide suggestions to fill the gaps. It further argues that India should take the lead in entering into a regional maritime security agreement with South and South East Asian nations within the ambit of UNCLOS 1982. This is important in the background of South China Sea Dispute an...
The Resurgence of Sea Piracy in Southeast Asia
2008
Conditions Favoring The Emergence Of Piracy 2.1. The Causes Related To The Milieu 2.1.1. The weight of tradition 2.1.2. The geographical background 2.1.3. The technological evolution 2.2. Political Causes 2.2.1. Instability always conducive to piracy 2.2.2. The Power Vacuum following the Cold War, a decisive factor for the resurgence of piracy 2.3. SocioEconomic Causes 2.3.1. Piracy and Development 2.3.2. The economic crises and the promised sea 2.3.3. "Cop or hooligan?" 2.4. Legal Causes 2.4.1. The initial legal considerations 2.4.2. The Montego Bay Convention: a definition that is both too restrictive and too broad 2.4.3. The Roma Convention: a relevant text, albeit not ratified 2.4.4. A highly underestimated threat