By Dr. Christian Bueger, University of Copenhagen
Maritime security is a global responsibility. All nations, including those without coastal waters, depend on the sea for trade, food, energy, and digital communication. Safeguarding shipping, protecting energy infrastructures, subsea data cables and the marine environment, fighting pollution, illicit fishing and other blue crimes are tasks that require nations worldwide to work together.
The global distribution of resources, capital and expertise, post-colonial legacies, but also the roles that states are given under the law of the sea, imply that states perform different functions in providing maritime security. States have regulatory roles as coastal, port or flag states, in providing search and rescue services, but also in terms of the maritime industries within their jurisdictions, whether that is shipping, fishing, or energy production.1
Some states, such as the small island nations of Cabo Verde and Seychelles are responsible for managing and safeguarding enormous maritime zones, with very limited resources. Other states, such as Congo, Mozambique or Somalia, are witnessing violence, are recovering from armed conflict, or deal with severe economic problems, and struggle to prioritize effective governance of the sea. This implies significant gaps in capacity – whether in terms of institutions, staff, equipment, technology or expertise – leading to situations where states de facto cannot control, govern and protect activities in their maritime zones.
While all nations benefit from the sea in one way or another, the income gained from the oceans is heavily concentrated. Research has documented that 60 per cent of the wealth generated by the sea ends up in the hands of only 100 corporations.2 The revenues from these corporations benefit only a few powerful states economically. This implies that these ocean economies have the responsibility to make strong contributions to safeguard the seas.
Also, maritime security and safety risks are unequally distributed. For example, large proportions of global ship traffic pass by the island states of Mauritius and Madagascar, implying severe risks of accidents and oil spills that can devastate the marine environment. Since ships enjoy freedom of navigation and do not stop in the island ports, these nations face high risks, but zero benefits.
Maritime spaces are interdependent, and so are blue crimes. As the Evergreen accident in the Suez Canal highlighted, a maritime incident in a strategic location can have large scale repercussions for world trade and global supply chains.3 Blue crimes, such as piracy, illicit fishing, the smuggling of narcotics or of people take place across states and regions and have trans-regional and often global effects.4 Moreover, in international waters all states that have signed, or comply with, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea have the “obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment” (Article 192).
While maritime security is a global responsibility, given the unequal distribution of territories, capabilities, risks and revenues burden sharing is required. In Africa many nations need support in providing maritime security, while not undermining their sovereignty and regional integration processes. This creates at least three major challenges: Problems linked to (1) how to deal with multi-level governance, (2) how to render capacity building effective, and (3) how to mitigate potential tensions of militarization.
Recalibrating the Maritime Security Multi-Level Governance System
Maritime security is an object of a quite complicated international regime complex. At which level maritime security is best provided is debatable. While the national level is obviously pivotal, most maritime security issues are transnational in character. On a global scale, more than twenty global international organizations deal with maritime security as a recent report by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research has documented.5 This includes the ‘big five’ of international maritime security agencies: the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), which each address maritime security from a different mandate.
Also, a wide range of regional cooperation mechanisms deal with maritime security. ‘Terrestrially’ organized regional organizations, such as the African Union or Africa’s regional economic communities have outlined maritime strategies and programmes. ‘Aquatic-oriented’ regional organizations addressing maritime security include those established under the Regional Seas Conventions supported by UNEP6 – the Abidjan, Nairobi, Jedda and Barcelona Conventions –, dedicated maritime security arrangements – such as the Djibouti and Yaoundé Code of Conduct facilitated by the IMO – or issue-specific regional organizations, such as the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission supported by FAO. Mini- and bi-lateral cooperation, such as the jointly managed maritime zone between Mauritius and Seychelles, complement the picture.
Such governance arrangements can significantly overlap and create the risks of duplication or interface conflicts between organizations. Is a problem such as illicit fishing best addressed through a global mechanism (e.g., the Food and Agricultural Organization), through a terrestrial-oriented body, such as the African Union, a dedicated maritime body, such as the Indian Ocean Commission’s Maritime Security (MASE) architecture operative in the Western Indian Ocean, or by an issue-specific regional body, such as the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission?
Moreover, is African maritime security provision best organized in continental terms – through pan-African mechanisms – or better approached through the lenses of ‘African seas’ with dedicated arrangements for the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean? And what happens if regional actors or international donors prefer one arrangement over the other, or, even worse, sideline and ignore one another?
These questions escape easy answers. Transparency and information sharing between organizations, and considerations of the principle of subsidiarity can be key to addressing them. Informal formats such as the Contact Group on Illicit Maritime Activities (CGIMA) for the Western Indian Ocean, or the G7++ coordination mechanism in the Gulf of Guinea can play very important roles in facilitating the needed transparency, information sharing, and strategic dialogues.
Informal maritime security governance arrangements that do not draw on formal legal treaties or have standing secretariats are often beneficial, since they allow for flexibility and experimentation, and avoid lengthy negotiations.
However, informality comes at a price. It often implies a lack of accountability – participants cannot be held accountable for their (in)actions. Moreover, the absence of formal rules for membership implies that important stakeholders might be excluded, and the lack of permanent administration can limit efficiency and the buildup of specialized expertise over time.
While this calls for efforts at formalizing cooperation, cases such as the failure to ratify the 2016 ‘African Charter on Maritime Security and Safety and Development in Africa’ (known as the Lomé Charter) illustrate that formalization and treaty making is not an easy process, either. Hence, careful and realistic calibration between formal and informal cooperation across different regional constructions is necessary.
Learning to Learn: Capacity Building Traps
The global responsibility to protect the sea under the condition of unequal distribution of revenues and risks implies that states benefiting from the ocean economy have a duty to assist through capacity building and technical assistance. Capacity building aims at enabling states and regions in performing crucial maritime security functions and developing their potential to govern the sea. Yet, research has shown that successful delivery of capacity building is full of intricacies.7
Project cycles of two to three years and emphasis on ‘low hanging fruits’ – short-term workshops, exercises or provision of equipment – can imply that there is limited focus on sustainability and long-term maintenance of capabilities. Donors bring with them their own priorities, idealized ways and institutional preferences of how maritime security challenges should be handled. They might prefer one agency over another, leading in the worst cases to organizational rivalry or political disruption. Capacity building is always a political intervention and hence implies effects on national and regional power constellations or might be perceived as threatening national sovereignty and hence evoke resistance. Some donors might, moreover, directly pursue commercial or political interests in providing capacity building, such as market development, arms trades, or countering the political influence of another state.
Such challenges are not easily overcome and hence place severe restrictions on what can be achieved through capacity building. Yet, success stories such as the building of the MASE structures by the Indian Ocean Commission supported by the European Union, or country cases, such as Seychelles, that have successfully disrupted piracy,8 illustrate the significant benefits that capacity building can bring, nonetheless.
The Militarization Dilemma: Avoiding Geopolitical Tensions
Not all gaps can be addressed through capacity building. Sustainable capacity building takes time. Human resources can be constrained. Maritime security threats can escalate to a scale that they become impossible to handle operationally by one state alone, as was the case with piracy off the coast of Somalia, or the increase in narcotics trade in the South Atlantic or Western Indian Ocean. High sea crimes demand international action.
To live up to their obligations, global ocean powers and other states need to directly contribute to maritime security through operations at sea. Since most coast guards and maritime police forces lack the capabilities to operate far from their home shore or stay out for prolonged periods at sea, operations usually require the employment of naval forces.
The use of high-end military forces leads to a dilemma.9 More military forces enhance maritime security on the one side. Their presence strengthens law enforcement and surveillance at sea and provides more robust deterrence of maritime crime. Indeed, military operations, including by the European Union’s Operation Atalanta and the US-led Combined Maritime Forces, have been vital in curbing piracy off the coast of Somalia or in fighting the maritime narcotics trade.
Yet, on the other side, the employment of naval forces is also a form of power projection and geopolitical signaling. Growing numbers of military vessels in regional seas, while beneficial for fighting maritime crimes, can lead to growing tensions or even escalatory dynamics. They also might undermine national sovereignty and lead to unintended dependencies or claims to permanent bases if countries are too reliant on outside military forces. Effective mechanisms of confidence building and deconfliction are vital to mitigate this challenge.
Navigating the Challenges: A Maritime Security Clearing House?
Translating the global responsibility to protect the sea into action requires innovative approaches to these complex challenges. Raising awareness among African nations and their international partners is fundamental. High-level attention must focus on recalibrating governance structures, ensuring the sustainability of capacity building, and mitigating tensions arising from militarization. Information sharing that enhances transparency and builds confidence is essential. This necessitates effective clearing house mechanisms that not only facilitate these processes but simultaneously promote ocean literacy and maritime domain awareness.
Formats such as the Shared Awareness and Deconfliction (SHADE) meetings or the Indian Ocean Commission’s Regional Operational Coordination Center are important instances of a growing number of operational mechanisms and maritime domain awareness centers aim at facilitating this flow of information. Yet, equal efforts are needed at strategic, diplomatic, and political levels. The revitalization of the Sea Power for Africa Symposium in 2024 and ambitions to initiate a pan-African coastguard functions forum are important steps in this direction. The question of whether maritime security is best addressed at a terrestrial continental pan-African level or through regional seas cooperation in the Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Mediterranean Sea, however, needs serious consideration.
Acknowledgments: Research for this article has benefitted from support by the Ocean Infrastructure Research Group funded by the Velux Foundation.
Dr. Christian Bueger is a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, where he leads the ocean infrastructure research group, and a research fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). He is the author of Understanding Maritime Security (Oxford University Press, 2024, with Timothy Edmunds). He has explored questions of international security and the sea in over 200 publications. In his current research he is investigating global maritime security governance and the challenges of critical maritime infrastructure protection. Further information is available on his personal website at www.bueger.info.
Endnotes
1. Christian Bueger and Timothy Edmunds, Understanding Maritime Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024).
2. J. Virdin, T. Vegh, J.-B. Jouffray, R. Blasiak, S. Mason, H. Österblom, D. Vermeer, J. Wachtmeister, and N. Werner, “The Ocean 100: Transnational Corporations in the Ocean Economy,” Science Advances 7, eabc8041 (2021). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abc8041
3. Nguyen Khoi Tran, Hercules Haralambides, Theo Notteboom, and Kevin Cullinane, “The Costs of Maritime Supply Chain Disruptions: The Case of the Suez Canal Blockage by the ‘Ever Given’ Megaship,” International Journal of Production Economics 279 (2025), 109464, doi: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2024.109464.
4. Christian Bueger and Timothy Edmunds, “Blue Crime: Conceptualising Transnational Organised Crime at Sea,” Marine Policy 119 (2020),104067. doi: 10.1016/j.marpol.2020.104067.
5. Christian Bueger, Timothy Edmunds, and Jan Stockbruegger, “Securing the Seas: A Comprehensive Assessment of Global Maritime Security,” United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), 2024, https://unidir.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Securing_the_seas_web-1.pdf
6. Elizabeth Mendenhall, “The Limits of Marine Regionalism in Global Ocean Governance: the UNEP Regional Seas Program,” in The Politics of Global Ocean Regions, ed. Christian Bueger, Elizabeth Mendenhall, Rebecca Strating (Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming).
7. Christian Bueger, “Maritime Security and the Capacity Building Challenge: Introducing the SafeSeas Best Practice Toolkit,” Seychelles Research Journal 1, no.2 (2019): 149–56; Christian Bueger and Timothy Edmunds, Understanding Maritime Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), 180-187.
8. Christian Bueger, Ryan Adeline, and Brendon J. Cannon, “Anti-piracy Lessons from the Seychelles,” War on the Rocks, April 23, 2024, https://warontherocks.com/2024/04/anti-piracy-lessons-from-the-seychelles/
9. Christian Bueger and Jan Stockbruegger, “Maritime Security and the Western Indian Ocean’s Militarisation Dilemma,” African Security Review 31, no. 2 (2022): 195-210, doi: 10.1080/10246029.2022.2053556.
References
Bueger, Christian and Jan Stockbruegger. “Maritime Security and the Western Indian Ocean’s Militarisation Dilemma.” African Security Review 31, no. 2 (2022): 195-210, doi: 10.1080/10246029.2022.2053556.
Bueger, Christian and Timothy Edmunds. “Blue Crime: Conceptualising Transnational Organised Crime at Sea.” Marine Policy 119 (2020): 1040670, doi: 10.1016/j.marpol.2020.104067.
Bueger, Christian and Timothy Edmunds. Understanding Maritime Security. Oxford University Press, 2024.
Bueger, Christian, Ryan Adeline, and Brendon J. Cannon. “Anti-piracy Lessons from the Seychelles.” War on the Rocks, April 23, 2024. https://warontherocks.com/2024/04/anti-piracy-lessons-from-the-seychelles/
Bueger, Christian, Timothy Edmunds, and Jan Stockbruegger. “Securing the Seas. A Comprehensive Assessment of Global Maritime Security. Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), 2024. https://unidir.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Securing_the_seas_web-1.pdf
Bueger, Christian. “Maritime Security and the Capacity Building Challenge: Introducing the SafeSeas Best Practice Toolkit.” Seychelles Research Journal 1, no. 2 (2019): 149–56.
Mendenhall, Elizabeth. “The Limits of Marine Regionalism in Global Ocean Governance: the UNEP Regional Seas Program.” in The Politics of Global Ocean Regions, ed. Christian Bueger, Elizabeth Mendenhall, Rebecca Strating. Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming.
Virdin, J. T. Vegh, J.-B. Jouffray, R. Blasiak, S. Mason, H. Österblom, D. Vermeer, J. Wachtmeister, and N. Werner. “The Ocean 100: Transnational Corporations in the Ocean Economy.” Science Advances 7 (2021). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.abc8041
Featured Image: A boarding team undertakes an operation as part of the simulated exercise in Seychelles. (Photo via UNODC/Global Maritime Crime Programme)