The Global Fight against Piracy
| Author | Christian Bueger |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12028 |
| Date | 01 February 2013 |
| Published date | 01 February 2013 |
The Global Fight against Piracy
Christian Bueger
Cardiff University
Maritime piracy –hijackings, kidnapping, hostage taking
and armed robbery at sea –presents an ongoing chal-
lenge for the international community. What was long
perceived as a problem of the past is today recognised
to be a major challenge for international security. To act
against piracy has proven to be an intricate affair. The
new attention to piracy and indeed the return of the
problem on the agendas of global politics started with
the significant increase of piracy incidents in Southeast
Asia in the 1990s. Southeast Asia has since seen the crea-
tion of a regional cooperation framework that addresses
piracy through information sharing, improved coordina-
tion and common strategy making. Although piracy inci-
dents in the area still occur, a viable counterpiracy
infrastructure has been put in place to address the men-
ace, and arguably piracy is well contained in the area.
Piracy in the Horn of Africa and the Western Indian
Ocean region is a different story. The international com-
munity has been increasingly engaged in the area since
2007, when the UN Security Council began to approach
the issue. International actors, including states and inter-
national organisations, have been quite innovative in or-
ganising the response: multilateral naval missions
organised by the US, NATO and the EU have been dis-
patched to the area; over 30 states participate in naval
counterpiracy activities; states, international organisations
(including the UN, the International Maritime Organisa-
tion, Interpol and the UN Office of Drugs and Crime) and
private actors (such as shipping associations) coordinate
their activity in the working groups of a UN Contact
Group; over 1000 pirates have been prosecuted or are
awaiting trial; and a complex international counterpiracy
programme mixes security and law enforcement with
regional rule of law projects, maritime security sector
reforms and development programmes. Yet success is
still limited. According to Jack Lang, the UN special advi-
ser on piracy, ‘the race between the pirates and the
international community is progressively being won by
the pirates’.
1
The authors of this special section discuss what makes
it so difficult for the international community to cope
with piracy. They discuss the intricacies of finding tai-
lored strategies and the obstacles and complexities that
actors face in addressing Somali piracy. The authors draw
on research from the emerging inter-disciplinary field of
piracy studies, which has attracted a growing number of
researchers from different disciplines.
2
Piracy studies is
an intellectual project that focuses on understanding the
return of piracy, how piracy is organised in different parts
of the world, how it is embedded in a larger historical
context and as part of international dynamics, and how
counterpiracy responses can be improved (Bueger, 2013).
It explores the relationship between piracy and other
threats, such as terrorism, and uses it as a paradigmatic
example for understanding contemporary international
problems. Through this lens, piracy studies facilitate a
productive inter-disciplinary dialogue and bring perspec-
tives into the conversation that have often been under-
stood as competitors or even as incommensurable.
Scholars from international law, international security,
development studies, logistics, economics and technical
disciplines engage in a conversation that is interested in
a distinct practical problem while nonetheless developing
theory relevant for other domains.
The authors of the following contributions interpret
Somali piracy and counterpiracy responses from political,
economic, legal, critical geopolitical, sociological and
anthropological perspectives and broadly analyse piracy
on two levels. First they investigate the phenomenon of
piracy and offer different frames of situating and under-
standing the local dynamics underlying the problem. The
article by Sarah Percy and Anja Shortland and that by
Axel Klein investigate the political, economic and cultural
dynamics in Somalia of which piracy is part, and sketch
important conclusions for how to deal with piracy. Both
contributions challenge conventional wisdoms. Percy and
Shortland encounter the link between piracy and failed
states and the idea that statebuilding in Somalia provides
a remedy to piracy. Klein critiques the shortcomings of
piracy as a business model, which is used increasingly as
an explanation for acts that he says are better under-
stood as subsistence activities. The second level of analy-
sis concerns the international response and context.
Douglas Guilfoyle, Basil Germond and I investigate the
international reaction to piracy and the evolving institu-
tional dynamics of counterpiracy. Guilfoyle studies the
main international governance and coordination mecha-
nism to address piracy: the UN Contact Group. Germond
reveals how the EU’s response should be understood
within broader geopolitical developments. Meanwhile,
Global Policy (2013) 4:1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12028 ©2013 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 4 . Issue 1 . February 2013 63
Special Section Article
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