Abstract
Ocean piracy, common in different parts of the world throughout history, was, however, very rare in the Horn of Africa waters until the mid-1990s. This chapter discusses the political economy of piracy in the strategic maritime passageway of the Horn. It first draws on relevant international conventions to advance a definition of maritime piracy. Second, it documents the emergence of piracy off the Somali coast and then highlights the negative impact of piracy on local, regional, and global economies and the prescriptions for combatting this scourge. Finally, the conclusion calls for a shift from short-term to longer-term sustainable solutions for reducing or eliminating maritime piracy in this important strategic and economic waterway.
The research for this chapter was made possible by a National Priorities Research Program Grant 5-1275-5-196 from the Qatar National Research Fund (of the Qatar Foundation).
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Notes
- 1.
Interview with a member of the inter-governmental organisations, Dubai, September 2013.
- 2.
Note that the IMO was an important player in the adoption of SUA. See Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation, available at http://www.imo.org/About/Conventions/ListOfConventions/Pages/SUA-Treaties.aspx.
- 3.
Interview with a member of the Industry, London, April 2014.
- 4.
At one point in the 1990s, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization reported that more than 700 vessels were fishing illegally in Somali waters.
- 5.
In fact, the EUNAVFOR does not even release data on ships illegally fishing off Somalia’s coastline.
- 6.
Interview, Dubai, 11 September 2013.
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Knight, W.A., Elmi, A.A. (2019). Combatting Piracy in the Horn of Africa Waters. In: Shaw, T.M., Mahrenbach, L.C., Modi, R., Yi-chong, X. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary International Political Economy. Palgrave Handbooks in IPE. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45443-0_30
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