Due to political instability and effective international actions, pirate attacks have been rising and dropping throughout the 21st century.
Article 101 of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982 defines piracy as any acts of violence or detention committed by the passengers of a private ship on high seas outside of the jurisdiction of the state.
The frequency of pirate attacks has increased alarmingly over the past few years. Statistics show that their main source of profit is ransom payment. According to UNODC-WB dataset, between 2005 and December 2012, between US$339 million and US$413 million was used as ransom payments for the Somali pirates. It is important to recognize these numbers do not include the number of ships released without a ransom (ex. due to military intervention).
As pointed out by Israel, “these immense ransoms are what is allowing pirates to engage in further criminal activity”. Apparently, the only way to tackle the issue is to “trap” ransoms.
It should be noted that although a lot of the funds acquired by pirates get put towards more illegal activities, they will also launder the money through direct investments in legitimate businesses.
Poland believes that the proposal suggested by the Israel representatives are all “very bad”, and thinks that they should use military force to halt these attacks from occuring. Additionally, the representative brought forth the idea of using a special intelligence agency to gather more accurate intel on the attacks so that they can use the information to retaliate.
There seems to be a general consensus that it is important to monitor, trace, and confiscate the financial flows from piracy; however, this would require cooperation between regional authorities, and improvements in security systems. Additionally, it has been hinted at that private companies should be made to take greater measure to prevent against piracy attacks.
Article 101 of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982 defines piracy as any acts of violence or detention committed by the passengers of a private ship on high seas outside of the jurisdiction of the state.
The frequency of pirate attacks has increased alarmingly over the past few years. Statistics show that their main source of profit is ransom payment. According to UNODC-WB dataset, between 2005 and December 2012, between US$339 million and US$413 million was used as ransom payments for the Somali pirates. It is important to recognize these numbers do not include the number of ships released without a ransom (ex. due to military intervention).
As pointed out by Israel, “these immense ransoms are what is allowing pirates to engage in further criminal activity”. Apparently, the only way to tackle the issue is to “trap” ransoms.
It should be noted that although a lot of the funds acquired by pirates get put towards more illegal activities, they will also launder the money through direct investments in legitimate businesses.
Poland believes that the proposal suggested by the Israel representatives are all “very bad”, and thinks that they should use military force to halt these attacks from occuring. Additionally, the representative brought forth the idea of using a special intelligence agency to gather more accurate intel on the attacks so that they can use the information to retaliate.
There seems to be a general consensus that it is important to monitor, trace, and confiscate the financial flows from piracy; however, this would require cooperation between regional authorities, and improvements in security systems. Additionally, it has been hinted at that private companies should be made to take greater measure to prevent against piracy attacks.