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Author : A. Varfolomeev
Assistant Professor, Acting Head of the Management Department (Nizhny Novgorod), National Re-
search University-Higher School of Economics (HSE), Candidate of Science (Political Science)
THE PAST FEW YEARS have seen what, to all intents and
purposes, is the revival of sea piracy. Hundreds of incidents
in the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Guinea, and elsewhere on
the high seas, involving attacks on ships from dozens of
countries, have again made piracy one of the main threats to
international security.
International piracy has reached a point where it can nearly
be qualified as a threat to international peace and security
with the potential invoking of Chapter VII of the UN Char-
ter. Until now, the UN Security Council has given such qualifications to only two types of
non-governmental threats - international terrorism (Resolutions 1368 and 1373) and pro-
liferation of weapons of mass destruction (Resolution 1540).
There arises a question: What is to be done about sea attacks that, in line with the letter of
international law, cannot be qualified as anything else than acts of quasi-piracy but, unfor-
tunately, are regularly committed in waters that are under national sovereignty?
There has never been more urgent need for an answer - statistically, acts of quasi-piracy,
i.e. assaults that fall outside the 1982 Convention's definition of piracy and include attacks
within territorial waters, have by and large been more numerous in recent years than acts
of piracy as such (see Table).
The Security Council provided a legal basis for international anti-piracy laws to be appli-
cable in Somali territorial waters. Hence, the two-element "piracy and armed robbery at
sea" formula became effective from the practical standpoint, authorizing the maximum
pooling of resources for offsetting the threat posed by Somali sea robbers, a threat that is
indivisible in practical terms. At the same time, by using the two-element formula rather
than a single general term, the Security Council emphasizes that piracy and armed robbery
at sea are different forms of crime and are not interchangeable in terms of international
law.
Anti-piracy action has been put under universal jurisdiction for centuries since piracy has
been seen as one of the most dangerous international crimes and a threat to the entire
civilized world. Pirates were called hostis humani generis (enemy of mankind) for several
centuries since antiquity.
http://interaffairs.ru
Modern Sea Piracy and International Law