Africa, Economy & Trade, Global, Global Geopolitics, Global Governance, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse

Trying Pirates Often as Tricky as Catching Them

Aprille Muscara

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 25 2010 (IPS) - U.N. member states and regional organisations debated the question of how Somali pirates should be prosecuted in a Security Council meeting Wednesday, following a report submitted last month by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outlining seven possible legal options.

Ban’s 54-page report details the advantages and disadvantages of the options, which involve supporting existing domestic courts, creating a new chamber within national courts, or establishing entirely new tribunals either regional or international in character to try suspects charged with piracy.

At the meeting, the secretary-general also announced that he had created a new Special Advisor position on Legal Issues Related to Piracy off the Coast of Somalia. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice welcomed Jack Lang, a former French special envoy to North Korea and international law professor, to the position.

Piracy has grown to be a serious menace, threatening the life and limb of seafarers, driving up costs in the global shipping industry and preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid. And the dangerous swashbuckling trend is spreading, speakers at the debate said, out of the notorious Gulf of Aden and into the Indian Ocean.

“The human cost of piracy off the coast of Somalia is incalculable, with killings and widespread hostage-taking of sailors whose daily jobs are already filled with risk,” Ban’s legal counsel Patricia O’Brien O’Brien said, adding, “The commercial cost is also very high.”

Over the last three years, states have dispatched military vessels to the area and coordinated and strengthened their communication and response. But the question of prosecution has remained outstanding, with suspects awaiting trial in countries all across the globe, including France, Germany, Kenya, Spain, the Seychelles and the U.S.


Commander James Kraska, professor of international law at the Naval War College, has written extensively on the issue of piracy.

“The main problem maritime powers now face with piracy is not a lack of operational resources to counter the threat, but what to do with the perpetrators when they are caught,” he wrote in the Armed Forces Journal last year. “Collaboration and regional partnering, not armed force, is the long-term solution to piracy.”

The option of enhancing the capability of existing national courts is one that is already taking place, particularly in Kenya and the Seychelles. In the past 18 months, 600 pirates in 11 countries have been prosecuted, Ban said.

Recently, Kenya has borne much of the brunt of the piracy caseload, with around 100 suspects in detention and around 18 convictions made in June alone. During the debate, Kenya’s permanent representative to the U.N. expressed concern about the feasibility of the existing situation.

“Current arrangements which have seen pirates handed over and tried in Kenya as well as in neighbouring states place a heavy burden on these countries and are clearly untenable in the long run,” said Kenyan Ambassador Zachary Muburi-Muita.

However, Japan seemed to find the ongoing enhancement of existing legal structures as the more favourable path, expressing reservations about the creation of new courts.

“Japan believes that it is appropriate for the coastal states to prosecute those who engaged in piracy, and it is important to strengthen the ability of coastal states to prosecute acts of piracy,” Japanese Ambassador Tsuneo Nishidia said in his first appearance at the Security Council as his country’s new permanent representative to the U.N. “Japan approaches cautiously the idea of establishing a new tribunal, considering the time and resources necessary to establish it.”

The other options discussed at the debate entail the creation of completely new legal structures, which O’Brien warned would require significant political and financial will given the large number of suspects, an unforeseeable end date and the fact that the courts would only address a symptom of the situation and not its causes.

Finding a host state and issues of repatriation and prison capacity were also pegged as key concerns with all of the options discussed.

“Given the large number of suspects being detained at sea by naval forces, it is clear that putting in place adequate prison arrangements is equally important as considering the options for prosecution,” O’Brien said.

Ultimately, however, all 33 speakers at the debate agreed that the stability of war-torn Somalia, ranked number one in Foreign Policy’s Failed State Index for three years running, is the key to solving the piracy problem.

“Somali piracy is directly tied to the failure of the institutions of governance of the Somali state,” Muburi- Muita said. “In seeking a definitive solution to the piracy issue, it is important that we aim at a durable solution to the political situation in Somalia, including addressing the socio-economic imperatives that have made piracy an attractive means of livelihood for Somalia’s youth.”

Forty percent of Somalia’s population is in need of humanitarian assistance and its people earn an average of less than two dollars per day. Yet just off the coast of the war-torn and blighted failed state – home of what the U.N. considers one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world – small gangs of AK-47-wielding freebooters earn an average of one to two million dollars per ransom.

Since early this year alone, 139 piracy-related incidents have taken place, with 30 ships hijacked and 450 individuals currently being held ransom, Ban noted. And according to Kraska, about a third of piracy acts are successful.

“Let us always remember that reducing and limiting piracy in the region means a sustained response not only at sea but also on land where piracy originates,” Ban said.

 
Republish | | Print |

Related Tags



best bdsm novels