Maritime piracy and armed robbery at sea

Piracy is one of the oldest threats to maritime security. It was largely thought to have been eradicated by the 1830s in most of the world’s oceans, except for parts of Asia. However, from the late twentieth century and into the early twenty-first century, it has again emerged as a significant threat to international maritime safety and security. In the modern context, the Somali piracy epidemic in the late 2000s and early 2010s is perhaps best known, but is today most prevalent off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea, and in Southeast Asia. However, international responses to piracy remain stymied by issues of international law, particularly definitional issues of what constitutes piracy as opposed to armed robbery at sea. As a result, the most effective responses to piracy have been at the level of regional initiatives. This is partly due to the fact that the causes of piracy and the type of piracy undertaken is largely driven by the geography of the littoral states and by political and economic developments on land. The threat of maritime piracy, and its distinction from armed robbery at sea, is examined in this chapter, with the case of Southeast Asia serving as a real-world illustration.