Preventing, Punishing, and Putting Up With Piracy

An age-old profession is making a comeback off the coast of Somalia. Piracy (of the nautical variety) has flourished in the Gulf of Aden’s major shipping lanes. This resurgence of what many thought to be an long-gone pursuit has been catalyzed by several factors: political instability and violence in Somalia, foreign pillaging of Somalia’s once-rich tuna fishing waters, and a constant stream of international trade vessels heading to or from the vital Suez Canal.

For young men of Somalia, inured to violence and on vulnerable economic footing due to years of intractable political conflict, piracy is an easy way to get rich quick. According to a recent New York Times article, pirate profits in Somalia are “on track to reach a record $50 million” this year. While any sort of economic success in Somalia is a heartening sign, the means to these new riches warrant scrutiny.

Their method is simple: spot a ship, sail next to it in dinghies and skiffs, commandeer the vessel by force and demand a multi-million dollar ransom. There are, of course, complications: both pirates and hostages have been killed, and the UN has given permission for nations to send their warships into Somalia’s territorial waters with the intent of attacking piracy. So far no solution has materialized, and the violence is likely only to increase.

What are the ethical dimensions to this issue? It seems at first to be simply an issue of enforcing universally accepted norms of maritime conduct; that piracy is not to be tolerated is a cornerstone of international law. However, in 2008 the British Foreign Office advised the Royal Navy not to detain pirates from certain nations, as the return of these pirates to their home nations could result in a violation of their human rights, and thus the pirates would be able to claim asylum in Britain under British Human rights law. It is true that many pirates operate out of nations that have particularly violent justice systems, and most often the punishment for piracy in these nations is mutilation or death.

It is unclear, however, that refusing to detain the pirates is the proper course of action. Perhaps it would troublesome to grant pirates asylum, but asylum in Britain does not preclude serving a sentence for piracy there. Failing to detain pirates does nothing to prevent future piracy, and returning the pirates to their countries of origin does constitute a human rights violation if the judicial systems are severely brutal in their punishment of piracy.

Also, a question of whether to return pirates to their nations of origin is only asked when there is a nation to refer to, and it is easy to argue that modern-day Somalia is actually a Somalia-shaped region of perpetual unrest. There are autonomous zones within territorial Somalia, such as Puntland, but the stability and legitimacy of these governments pose open questions.

If nations such as Britain wish to pursue the enforcement of naval law and protection of their shipping, then they are under obligation to pursue these goals in the fashion most just, and that means the fashion that respects all the rights of the accused while subjecting them to the most just legal framework available. If bringing these people to justice involves some inconvenience along the way, so be it.

There is another ethical issue with scope beyond the questions relating to specific acts of piracy. Somali piracy can be seen as a problem in and of itself, but it can also be seen as a symptom of societal malaise. Piracy only became a viable career in Somalia after infrastructure collapsed in the early 1990s. Armed vessels took to the Gulf of Aden to prevent the opportunistic harvest of Somalia’s tuna fishing waters. When foreign ships depleted the tuna, Somali fishermen looking for a living turned to piracy.

Given these circumstances there is a sense in which Somali pirates are not completely responsible for their choice of livelihood. If there has been no stability in one’s country for over fifteen years and nautical violence is seen as just another career, then the role of pirates as fully responsible agents seems diminished against the reality of their situation, a state of effectively coercive hunger and poverty.

Clearly, pursuing Somali piracy from a purely punitive angle misses the real moral issue, much like trying to control smoke, when one’s main concern ought to be the blaze causing it. Piracy will cease when it is no longer profitable, and it will stop being so only when there is a stable Somalia.

-Davis Bennett