How Does Violence Threaten the State? Four Narratives on Piracy

Violence characterized by similar actions, actor motivations, group structures, or level of damage still poses qualitatively distinct genera of threats to states. For instance, “terrorism” can threaten a particular state, be used by a state, or threaten the entire state system. Building on the threat construction literature, this study argues that threat is best understood through narratives on the relationship between violence and the boundary-producing practices that construct the state. Four ideal-typical basic narratives on this relationship are produced—entrant, resource, revisionist, and criminal. Each narrative is then demonstrated by looking at how it was used in a historical case of piracy. The action (piracy as raiding at sea) is held constant while the threat in each varies with the narrative. Understanding how threat is narratively constructed can help us to understand particular historical episodes of violence and state responses to them.     

Hedonists and husbands: piracy narratives,gender demands,and local political economic realities in Somalia

The grand narrative of piracy has been instrumental in shaping how piracy off the coast of Somalia is understood and responded to. Self-proclaimed pirates, suspected pirates, and convicted piracy prisoners continue to tell the story of taking up arms against foreign illegal fishers to protect their personal livelihoods as well as Somalia’s natural resources. Although the grand narrative remains the most popular piracy narrative, this paper introduces and examines two newly emergent narratives of Somali piracy – the Somali women’s narrative and the piracy prisoner self-narrative. I explore how these narratives reveal a central paradox surrounding piracy and social reproduction in Somalia that, until now, has been absent from discussions about piracy narratives and the issue of Somali piracy. Whereas the grand narrative of piracy fails to address gender demands and local political economic realities in Somalia, the new narratives present piracy as a gendered experienced that is situated within the broader, evolving context of courtship and marriage in Somalia. I argue the new narratives can help push beyond over-simplistic understandings of piracy off the coast of Somalia as a ‘man’s crime’ that should be addressed by men.     

海商法视角内的海盗强索赎金问题

海盗劫持船舶已成为威胁国际航运安全的重要因素,大多数海盗劫持船舶事件最终都以向海盗缴纳赎金的方式解决。虽然海盗行为属于国际刑法的研究范畴,但海盗索取赎金的后果关乎船货双方的风险和损失分担问题,因此,有必要在海商法的视角内对此加以研究。根据海盗索取赎金时所指向的对象,赎金分为船货赎金、船员赎金和乘客赎金三类,应通过赎金的性质确定风险的最终承担者。     

New threats – different response: EU and NATO and Somali piracy

When the European Union (EU) launched its first military naval mission, EU NAVFOR Somalia, Atalanta, the states who are members of both the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made a political choice: to prioritize the EU over NATO in their multilateral military efforts to fight piracy and its consequences. Thereby, Atalanta challenges the conventional assumption that EU security cooperation will remain limited. It also challenges the widely held belief that the European states will chose to act through NATO if dealing multilaterally with international security issues. How can we explain this decision? This analysis suggests that it can be explained in two phases where different mechanisms were at work. In the first phase, which can be accounted for from a neo-realist perspective, France, who held the Presidency, used particular favorable geopolitical conditions to put an autonomous EU operation on the agenda. However, agreement on the EU option cannot be explained as a result of strategic bargaining. Instead, in a second phase and in line with an alternative hypothesis building on the theory of communicative action, the EU member states came to support the French suggestion due to legitimacy considerations regarding the legal framework of the two operations.     

近十年日本防范和打击海盗对策研究

近十年日本商船受到海盗威胁比较严重,因此日本高度重视防范和打击海盗问题,建立了以日本为主导的亚洲反海盗合作机制,并派军舰参加了在索马里和亚丁湾海域的护航行动。日本所采取的这些措施对维护海运安全起到一定作用,但由于日本是受《和平宪法》约束的"非正常国家",其热衷打海盗的背后还有着更加深远的战略目的,需要加以警惕。     

马六甲海峡西段海盗活动适用于普遍管辖权

长期以来,马六甲海峡沿岸国家负责海峡航运安全管理,他们坚持对海峡内的海盗活动进行排他性管理,仅同意非沿岸国家间接参与。通过对相关统计数据与《联合国海洋法公约》等国际法律制度的详细分析,作者认为海峡西段为海盗活动重心,这一区域的海盗活动适用于普遍管辖权制度,海峡沿岸国的做法缺乏国际法依据。主要由沿岸国实施的现有反海盗制度是有效的,海盗活动猖獗的局面不大可能重现。     

Somali pirates: villains or victims?

The proliferation of piracy activity off the coast of Somalia has received a fair share of international attention. Its consequences have included a destabilising effect on trade, security and humanitarian aid. This has served to give reason for the deployment of multi-national forces by some of the countries affected by the scourge. While naval patrols have reduced the success rate of piracy attacks in some areas, there has been little respite in piracy incidents with the overall number of attacks and their geographic scope increasing. Piracy off the coast of Somalia has, in fact, evolved into organised syndicates with transnational networks. The problem is that various international actors have largely viewed piracy off the coast of Somalia in terms of threats to their own national interests and security. They have, thus, dealt with the issue in isolation from its wider context, which has not succeeded in ending the attacks. This article argues that to deal with the piracy problem more meaningfully, there is need for a contextual framework beyond addressing the ‘illegal’ activities. Piracy is a complex problem, with political, legal, social, economic, security and even human rights dimensions, and calls for a truly holistic approach that, especially, seeks to address the root causes on land. The article calls for a change in strategies in order to facilitate a ‘local Somali solution’ rather than an international one that is acceptable to the sensibilities of international actors. The article emphasises the need to extend the strong international cooperation demonstrated on the high seas in the fight against piracy to the fight against root causes of piracy onshore.     

Fire over water: China's strategic engagement of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden crisis

Abstract

Since China agreed to join the international counter-piracy coalition in late 2008, a watershed development in Chinese strategic policy, Beijing's engagement in Somalia is now following two separate streams. First, China is seeking to engage Somalia as part of its expanding number of African diplomatic partners via its participation in the coalition. Second, China is attempting to demonstrate, on the international level, its growing commitment to developing its naval capabilities, and protecting its maritime trade interests, by engaging in multilateral and coalition-based operations, namely to combat piracy off the Somali coast, in order to deflect criticism from the United States and its allies of China's overall military expansion and modernization.     

“盗版”犯罪与刑法遏制

目前受版权市场高额利润引诱,加上市场制度不健全、地方经济发展中急功近利的取向,我国盗版犯罪形势严峻,因此有必要对其实现刑法遏制。即严格刑事立法中的有关定罪标准;改变运动式严打的做法,准确、持久地运用刑法手段,提高盗版犯罪成本;与此同时,刑法对版权领域的有限介入,不应解读为刑事法被虚置。     

海盗的历史、现状与《海上刑事法案准则》（草案）

分析海盗的法律概念、由来及特点,介绍全球联手打击海盗的措施与效果,详细介绍国际海事组织（IMO）针对海盗和海上犯罪行为专门制定的《海上刑事法案准则》（草案）。