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The United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea regime makes it incumbent upon the capturing state to effectively prosecute the apprehended pirates as per their domestic laws. Many states, including India, have not developed piracy-related domestic legislation; therefore, the domestic courts face various substantive and procedural challenges during trial. Indian judiciary relies on various criminal law statues to prosecute maritime pirates, none of which defines piracy as a crime in India. The Indian government has recently introduced the Anti-Maritime Piracy Bill, 2019. This paper seeks to examine the prosecution of maritime pirates in India and identify the existing gaps within the legal framework. Further, this paper discusses the Anti-Maritime Piracy Bill, 2019 in detail to determine if it can achieve effective prosecution of maritime pirates by filling in the gaps of the current Indian criminal law regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Djibouti Code of Conduct plays a central role in addressing maritime piracy and armed robbery in the Western Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. Assuming rational actors base diplomatic decisions on cost-benefit calculations, this paper argues that decision-makers consider existing policy models on interstate cooperation when drafting international agreements. Comparing state-to-state agreements on the combat of maritime crimes which are located in different world regions, and studying the causal mechanisms behind policy adoption, the benefits of adopting institutional features from existing institutions, and exchanging best practices are underlined. The results suggest that the Djibouti Code of Conduct is subject to and subject of an inter-regional learning process. Facilitated by the International Maritime Organization, the code drew heavily on counter-piracy experiences from Southeast Asia, and in turn influenced cooperation on illicit maritime activities in West and Central Africa. Interviews with decision-makers add to the understanding of the code’s drafting and highlight the potential of inter-regional synergies for diplomacy in the Indian Ocean region beyond maritime crime governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of a Sustainable Development Goal (No. 14) on the oceans by the United Nations (UN) provides formal and global recognition that the effective management of the blue economy is a key component of global development efforts. For island states, the importance of the maritime domain is unquestionable with many having responsibility for, and access to, vast areas of ocean. In the Indian Ocean region, island states have increasingly recognized this situation by placing greater emphasis on ocean policy and the opportunities the maritime domain offers. However, island states inevitably face challenges as their smaller size often means they lack the capacity to enhance their maritime domain awareness and effectively respond to insecurity. This paper seeks to shed further light on the maritime security considerations – their characteristics and influencing factors – of island states in the Indian Ocean. The paper contains a content analysis of key documents to examine the way in which maritime security challenges have been publicly communicated by island states in the region. It then utilizes additional documents and interview material to elaborate the way in which two specific states – Mauritius and Seychelles – have approached their maritime security in maritime piracy for Seychelles and drug trafficking in Mauritius. In doing this, the paper provides valuable insights into the way in which policy-makers in Indian Ocean island states understand the sustainable development–maritime security relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa's coastal zones and ocean spaces bear certain unique features as different from those of the other zones of the Indian Ocean region. One such maritime characteristic is that the continent is virtually flanked by sea on all four sides. Such uniqueness of the region has both positive and negative consequences for the coastal countries of Africa. The adverse consequences of the maritime topography, such as piracy and illegal fishing, are rather more seriously felt by today by the regional states. The unstable and fragile political regimes of many of the African littoral countries compound the problems of managing their maritime domains. Maritime criminal and illegal operations are confined not only to the coastal states but also to the island states of the continent. The inability of these states to combat the threats regularly posed by maritime non-state actors has resulted in the enormous naval militarisation of the African waters by foreign naval forces, Western and non-Western. How far and how long the states of the region should depend on foreign countries for ensuring the safety of their coastal zones will also determine the level of independence that these states will retain to keep their maritime wealth and domain under their sovereign control. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the late 1990s and the early 2000s, this author conducted a comparative study on regime building in the world's three maritime ‘mega regions’, i.e., the Atlantic, the (Asia-) Pacific and the Indian Ocean. The aim was to explain why regime building is so difficult in the latter as compared to the former two, and why newly formed regimes tend to end up as ‘sandbanks of shattered hope’ soon after their inauguration. Many reasons were offered both by the author's numerous respondents and by the author himself, but amongst the findings was the widely shared opinion of specialists from various Indian Ocean Rim countries that attempts at regime building tended to fail because their aims and objectives were too lofty. Rather, it was argued that regime-building attempts should start on the relatively modest level of confidence building measures which all potential participants could agree on, such as disaster relief, search and rescue (SAR), sustainable development of marine resources, fisheries protection, and the fight against piracy. All those measures can be subsumed under the label ‘maritime governance’, which will be define below. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International discussion of Somali piracy is now largely conducted in the language of law enforcement, not war or terrorism. The aim of this paper is to explain in a brief and practical way to non-lawyers the relevant legal categories and controversies surrounding Somali piracy and to suggest why the response to piracy has remained in the law enforcement ‘box’. It does this by considering piracy through the lens of four legal ‘paradigms’: the law of armed conflict; the international law of piracy; the law of terrorism (including terrorist financing); and the law applicable to transnational organised crime. The contention will be that the law enforcement paradigm is not only legally justifiable but also highly pragmatic and that the other categories may hold fewer benefits than observers might assume. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the Port State Control (PSC) regime in relation to ensuring the safety and security of international shipping against threats of piracy and maritime terrorism in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Responsibility for ensuring compliance with required international standards of safety and security rests primarily with the flag states of vessels, but in practice, effective compliance is verified mainly through the system of Port State Control (PSC). However, PSC appears ineffective in the IOR, including around the Horn of Africa, where acts of piracy and armed robbery against ships are prevalent. Significant numbers of sub-standard ships operate in this region. These vessels are more likely to be successfully attacked or involved in illegal activity than quality ships. This situation could be symptomatic of wider problems in international shipping that throw doubt on the effectiveness of current regional regimes for ship safety, security and marine environmental protection, including measures to prevent maritime terrorism and illicit trafficking in weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and related materials. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Maritime violence perpetrated by non-state actors is a feature of the Indian Ocean. This includes the piracy, which has occurred most prominently off Somalia but also in the waters of Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, and terrorism perpetrated by al-Qaeda, the Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) against the Indian city of Mumbai. This paper aims to chart why opportunities for non-state actors to use violence to advance their interests may continue across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When analysing maritime security issues and Yemen, emphasis tends to be on the state weakness of Yemen and its ‘4.5’ conflicts. While keeping the conflicts in the analysis, this article changes focus and argues that Yemen's position along two maritime highways and situated in two regional ‘cold wars’ should not be neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International maritime security issues are high on the agenda of many states and international organisations. Assaults in international waters on vessels flying the Spanish flag raised the awareness of piracy and other illicit acts at sea. Spain applies a twofold strategy in order to fight against piracy off the Somali coast and in the Indian Ocean: it takes part in the first maritime operation of the European Union (EU), EU NAVFOR Atalanta, and facilitates the deployment of private security companies (PSCs) on board civilian vessels sailing in international waters. Based on the security governance concept, this paper examines and compares the strategies regarding actors, the decision-making processes, legal issues and effectiveness. The article argues that the main reason for the change in security policy is that the actors involved assume a security governance approach to be more effective in solving a specific security problem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper identifies the root causes and general typology of the widespread phenomena of piracy off the coast of Somalia. It shows that piracy in this region started as a direct response to illegal fishing, with widespread claims of hazardous waste dumping offering added moral justification. It argues that the two international crimes that are the root causes of Somali piracy constitute corporate terrorism at sea. The alacrity of the earliest illegal trawlers that were captured by the fishermen to pay ransom unleashed the scourge of criminal/ransom piracy that has overshadowed – in figures and discourse – ‘defensive’ piracy. Restoring the state and combating poverty can help minimise the favourable conditions that latter-day pirates exploited to launch their trade, but will not eradicate piracy without successfully containing the corporate terrorism that triggered it in the first place. Moreover, combating poverty among fishing coastal communities require the eradication of illegal fishing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For a comprehensive and meaningful understanding, the maritime-related security challenges facing the Indian Ocean littoral states need to be looked at broadly. Non-traditional security issues - from energy security and climate security to transnational terrorism and environmental degradation - are as important as traditional maritime security issues such as freedom of navigation, security of sea-lanes, maritime boundary and domain security, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and challenges to law and order (including piracy and sea robbery, criminal activities like drug, people and arms smuggling, illicit, unreported and unregulated fishing, illegal immigration, and maritime terrorism). The non-traditional issues extend to the maritime aspects of economic security, food security, environmental security and human security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significant recent increase in acts of piracy and attacks against shipping off the Horn of Africa has resulted in unprecedented attention being focussed on the region and Somalia in particular. It is the case, however, that piracy represents only one consequence of the lack of meaningful maritime security in the region and especially off the Somali littoral. These threats are considered against the region's complex geographical, historical and geopolitical context. Key underlying causes for the lack of maritime security in the Horn of Africa are explored. The paper concludes that there is a fundamental need to restore law and order ashore in order to deliver security offshore and that, consequently, the prospects for success of the significant international maritime cooperation that has been engendered to combat the maritime security threats discussed, are bleak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including maritime security, maritime terrorism, and piracy in the Indian Ocean.