Abstract
With the on-going environmental state-change in the Arctic, security issues are becoming more urgent for increasing Arctic shipping. This chapter examines how the existing rules of international customary and treaty law on repression of piracy and other unlawful acts against the safety of maritime navigation might be applicable to the waters of the Arctic Ocean. The main characteristics of such rules – as they are provided in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 1988 Convention on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation – are scrutinized in this chapter in the specific context of the developing Arctic law. This chapter also considers the relevant provisions of other international agreements and soft-law instruments in the light of a broader framework of international customary law.
While addressing the applicability of these universal legal rules to the Arctic Ocean, this chapter summarizes the challenges we face in preventing crimes in the Arctic Region. In this context, this chapter considers the lessons learned from attempts to repress unlawful acts against the safety of shipping in the regions of Somalia, the Strait of Malacca and South-East Asia in general. The chapter suggests the development of a “precautionary regional approach” for anti-criminal activity along the Arctic shipping routes, including transpolar routes.
In sum, this chapter addresses two key questions: how do we build (within the rules of international law which are applicable to the waters of the Arctic Ocean) common interests among Arctic and non-Arctic states to combat unlawful acts against the safety of navigation in those waters and prevent such acts from expanding? To this end, how can we adopt a precautionary anti-criminal approach that takes into account urgencies arising from the warming of the Arctic region and the recession and thinning of ice in the Arctic Ocean and the discovery of new islands previously covered by ice, as well as the relevant increase in maritime economic activities in the Arctic?
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Notes
- 1.
According to the Federal Law of the Russian Federation of 31 July 1998 (titled “Internal Sea Waters, Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone of the Russian Federation”), “Navigation on the seaways of the Northern Sea Route, a historically established national uniform transport communication of the Russian Federation in the Arctic, including through the Vilkitsky, Shokalsky, Dmitry Laptev, Sannikov straits, is carried out according to the present federal law, other federal laws, international treaties of the Russian Federation and Regulations for navigation on the seaways of the Northern Sea Route, approved by the federal enforcement organ authorized by the Government of the Russian Federation”.
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Vylegzhanin, A.N., Anyanova, E.S. (2022). (Research): Preventing Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Navigation in Arctic Seas. In: Berkman, P.A., Vylegzhanin, A.N., Young, O.R., Balton, D.A., Øvretveit, O.R. (eds) Building Common Interests in the Arctic Ocean with Global Inclusion. Informed Decisionmaking for Sustainability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89312-5_5
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