SafeSeas participates in Djibouti Code of Conduct high level meeting in Jeddah

The Djibouti Code of Conduct remains one of the major agreements in the Western Indian Ocean to strengthen regional cooperation in maritime security bringing countries from Africa and the Arabian Peninsula together. Initially only focused on piracy, the Code’s focus area was extended through the 2017 Jeddah Amendments to cover all types of maritime crimes. … Read more

Participation in International Maritime Conference in Karachi

As part of its biennial multi-national naval exercise Aman, the Pakistani government is organizing an International Maritime Conference. This years iteration had the theme “Global Geopolitics in Transition: Rethinking Maritime Dynamics in the Indian Ocean Region”. As part of the conference SafeSeas director Prof. Bueger gave a keynote address arguing that Pakistan needs to peer … Read more

Discussion of Maritime Domain Awareness in Southeast Asia

One of the core areas work of the SafeSeas’ project TOCAS is Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA). Asking how MDA can become a fruitful tool for better law enforcement at sea, the disruption of transnational organised crime as well as increased cooperation, the SafeSeas team is developing a guide. On the 24th of January, SafeSeas Director … Read more

SafeSeas presents draft guidelines on MDA at meeting in Durban

SafeSeas presented it’s draft guidelines for maritime domain awareness (MDA) at a meeting of the Djibouti Code of Conduct (DCoC) organised by the Internaitonal Maritime Organisation. At the meeting which was a follow up to the 2018 meeting in Jeddah, the next steps were discussed on how to improve the information sharing network of DCoC, … Read more

The Galle Dialogue in Sri Lanka

SafeSeas Director Prof. Christian Bueger participated in the 9th edition of the Galle Dialogue of the Sri Lanka navy. The Galle Dialogue is an important regional forum in the discussion of maritime security and the geo-political dynamics of the Indian Ocean. Prof. Bueger chaired the opening panel which featured presentations from the navies of India, … Read more

Uniting nations: developing maritime domain awareness for the ‘Blue Pacific’

This commentary by Christian Bueger and Anthony Bergin was originally published on ASPI’s The Strategist Pacific island states face a pressing need to understand more about what’s happening in the waters that surround them and to work more closely to deal with threats and crises. Maritime security-related issues represent some of the most valuable areas … Read more

Maritime spill over! Shipping at risk. The global consequences of the conflict in Yemen.

What started as a small scale rebellion has now become a full-fledged civil war fuelled by external engagements: Yemen’s political futures is more and more uncertain. The country is on the way to a protracted conflict as we have come to know it from the situations in Somalia, Libya and elsewhere. Yemen’s conflict is mainly … Read more

Maritime Security Capacity Building: Spotting the Gaps.

This working paper, part of the Capacity Building project, discusses which methodologies are available for assessing maritime security sectors. On this basis it proposes a new methodology the Spaces, Problems, Institutions, Projects framework. Read the paper here.

Norm Subsidiarity in Maritime Security: Why East Asian States Cooperate in Counter-Piracy

Terrence Lee and Kevin McGahan, National University of Singapore Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia are the three key littoral countries that border the Straits of Malacca, a major waterway and transit area in Southeast Asia which has traditionally witnessed a fair amount of maritime piracy through the ages.  While these countries generally hold many things in … Read more

Combatting Maritime Piracy: African Perspectives on an Emerging Threat

Henri Fouché, University of South Africa (UNISA) In 2014 the South African Journal Acta Criminologica (Southern African Journal of Criminology) published a special edition on African perspectives on combating maritime crime. Most articles are based on papers presented at a conference entitled “Sea Piracy: International and Continental Responses” organised by the University of South Africa … Read more