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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Over the past 25 years piracy and armed robbery against vessels have become a growing concern for the shipping industry and the international community. Since 1984, when the International Maritime Organization of the United Nations started to collect information about acts of piracy and armed robbery against vessels, close to 4,000 such acts have been reported to the organization. The problem, moreover, has grown worse since the turn of the millenium. In 2004 alone, 330 cases were recorded - a notable decline from the previous year's 452 cases, but still a substantially higher figure than any year of the twentieth century. Over half of the attacks worldwide, 169 cases in 2004, occurred in Southeast Asia, and a map of the region included in the IMO's annual Report on Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships shows much of Indonesia's coastline dotted with black spots, each representing an attack (1). With most of the attacks in or around Indonesian waters, the country has earned a reputation as a haven for pirates, and a couple of years ago a well-known correspondent and author on organized crime in Asia even dubbed the country the “pirate republic” (2).
(1) International Maritime Organization, “Reports on Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships - Annual Report 2004”, MSC.4/Circ.64, 5 May 2005, accessed on 26 July 2005. The IMO report does not use the term “Southeast Asia” but the more inexact “Far East” (further divided into “Malacca Strait” and “South China Sea”). All but four of the 173 cases recorded in the “Far East”, however, occurred in Southeast Asia (i.e. in or around the waters of ASEAN countries).
The IMO distinguishes between “piracy” which, in accordance with the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is defined as incidents occurring on the high seas or outside the jurisdiction of any state, and “armed robbery” which is defined as incidents occurring within a state's jurisdiction.
(2) Lintner, Bertil, Blood Brothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia, New York and Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2003.
(3) Resolution A.545(13) on “Measures to Prevent Acts of Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships”, adopted by the IMO Assembly, 13th session, 17 November 1983. In 2004, only three states, Colombia, Liberia and the United Arab Emirates, reported attacks to the organization.
(4) The IMB also publishes annual (as well as biannual) piracy reports; see ICC International Maritime Bureau, “Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships. Annual Report, 1 January - 31 December 2004”, Barking, Essex: ICC International Maritime Bureau 2005. In addition, the IMB posts weekly piracy reports on the Internet (accessed on 26 July 2005).
(5) Ibid., p. 2; italics in original.
(6) It is assumed that the real number of attacks were twice the reported number, giving a total of 114 for the year in the northern and southern parts of the Malacca Strait.
(7) Gottshalk, Jack A. and Brian P. Flanagan, Jolly Roger with an Uzi: The Rise and Threat of Modern Piracy, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2000, p. 90.
(8) See further the manufacturer's Internet web page at http://www.secure-marine.com, accessed on 28 July 2005.
(9) Gunawan, Apriadi, “Pirates kill four aboard ship in North Aceh”, Jakarta Post, 6 February and ICC International Maritime Bureau, p. 17.
(10) See the IMO's monthly reports for January-March 2005: MSC.4/Circ.65, MSC.4/Circ.66, and MSC.4/Circ.67, all accessed on 28 July 2005.
(11) Wong Sai Wan, “M'sia willing to provide security in the Straits”, The Star, 7 September 1992.
(12) John F. Bradford, “The Growing Prospects for Maritime Security Cooperation in Southeast Asia”, Naval War College Review, 58: 3.
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