Somali Pirate Skiff

Abstract

This chapter discusses the role of small uncovered boats powered by outboard engines in the Somali piracy crisis of 2003–2013. It examines the tactics and economics of Somali piracy in some detail. It then considers the three-pronged international response involving naval patrols, law-enforcement piracy trials, and measures of industry self-protection. The chapter notes the curious possibility that the response to Somali piracy involves probably the first widespread assertion of universal jurisdiction over pirates in practice. It concludes by considering the extent to which Somali piracy and counter-piracy may be emblematic of some of international law’s current preoccupations: embodying both the potency of the asymmetrical non-state actor in challenging the established international order and also the ‘new normal’ of relatively informal, transnational coordination of state responses to transnational crime and non-traditional threats.