A Maritime Security Framework for Fighting Piracy

Abstract

The number of piracy attacks in the Strait of Malacca is significantly reduced from 112 in 2000 to 2 in 2009. While people are celebrating the success of anti-piracy operations applied in the Strait, the number of piracy attacks in the Somalia region increased to its peak. According to the IMO, there were a total of 406 piracy attacks reported worldwide in 2009 and Somali pirates accounted for 217 attacks. There is a total of 1052 crew taken hostage with 68 injured and eight were killed. Since the attacks were well organized and sophisticated weapons such as RPGs were used, it caught the eyes of the world in the news headlines. This paper studies the successful factors as well as the deficiencies in the anti-piracy operations as applied in the two cases and provides an anti-piracy framework for combating piracy to improve maritime security in the high sea.