Grab your Swords? Arming Shipping Vessels Against Somalian Pirates

Red sky warning, pirate season is fast approaching. As the promise of calmer seas in springtime Somalia nears, international ships are readying themselves for the next wave of attacks. While many ships are deploying defensive measures such as radar, thermal video equipment, fire hoses, electric fences and ingenious acoustic distractions (such as the sound of dogs barking), an increasing number of ships are stocking up on something that comes with much weightier legal dilemmas: armed guards.

In order to combat the oldest recognized international crime commercial ships are taking notes from the violent pirate days of yore – and this is quickly escalating the threat of violence and raising tricky issues of legal liability.

In early March, Somali pirates hit a Spanish fishing boat off the coast of Kenya with a rocket-propelled grenade while private security guards on board shot at the pirates. In the early days of Somalian pirating, such sophisticated weaponry was unknown – all the pirates needed to do was wave a rusty gun at the surprised crew jumped into action.

Hostage-taking may result in huge ransoms and a flurry of media attention yet, despite the number of pirate attacks at sea increasing each year, deaths among the crew are uncommon (four in total in 2009) and international businesses have continued to risk the odds against attacks by sailing through the narrow Somalian seaway and trusting their insurance companies to cover the…

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Somalian Pirates We!

In the battle against the ever-increasing threat of piracy off the coast of Somalia, a court has finally entered the fray. The court in question is Dutch, and in a recent decision stepped in to prevent a 14-year old girl from sailing off on her own to join the Somali pirates. Typically, the girl claimed she only wanted to break the record for the youngest solo circumnavigation of the world by sail. The truth however is painfully obvious: under the influence of torrent websites and Johnny Depp, youngsters from around the world are unable to resist the romance of piracy, and are setting sail to Somalia to sign up.

Striking a blow against Somali piracy, the momentous Dutch decision responded to a simple question: with no credible Somali government, who else was going to do it? And why shouldn’t a country enforce laws for someone else – look at Belgium’s fancy “universal jurisdiction” law. These questions go to a problem at the heart of public international law today: the “law is power” conundrum. In private international law, states in recent history have been moving further and further from a power-based model towards one founded on international comity. Globalisation rhetoric would have us believe that public international law is doing the same, but the Somali piracy issue belies this notion.

Somalia today, along with a handful of other places such as Pakistan’s tribal regions and…

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