Relevance of International Criminal Law to Piracy in Asian waters

摘要

The piracy provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 that entered into force in 1994 apply only on the high seas and in the EEZ. Moreover, the provisions cover only acts that take place for private motives and involve another ship or aircraft, and arrest on account of piracy has to be carried out by a specified type of government ship or aircraft even though universal jurisdiction applies. The exclusion of politically inspired acts (as in the case of the Achille Lauro) from the LOSC definition of piracy was the catalyst for the International Maritime Organisation Convention for the Suppression of Unlcnvfiil Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation 1988 (the Rome Convention) that entered into force in 1992. This convention provides another means of prosecuting piratical type acts, although universal jurisdiction does not apply to the convention and it has been ratified by only a small number of countries in Asia.