This week the most important informal governance forum addressing piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, the G7++ Friends of the Gulf of Guinea, is holding its meeting. A recording of the event is available here.

Upon invitation of the current chair, the US Department of State, I am giving a joint presentation with the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We were invited to speak about how academic research might inform counter-piracy efforts.

The background is our research project AMARIS which is funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. AMARIS analyses maritime insecurity in Ghana, and aims at informing policy by studying a paradigmatic case in the region. Our questions are: What can be learned from Ghana for the region? How can maritime security governance be reformed and what is the role of international assistance?

In the presentation I argue that academics can inform responses, on three levels:

1. Providing a better understanding of what the problem of piracy actually is by contextualising it, comparing it, and offering insights on structures, change and root causes.
2. By analysing what works and what doesn’t and laying out new alternative actions not previously considered.
3. In being directly part of the response, through awareness raising measures, science diplomacy or training and education activities.

With the presentation I hope to address some of the misunderstandings in terms of what academics can do and what not, but also ensure a more productive dialogue.

Contact me, if you are interested in a copy of the presentation or want to watch the video.

Why do we need blue criminology and what are its objectives? That was the key question we discussed at an event hosted by the University of Plymouth’s Center for Blue Governance.

Held on November 25th, Tim Edmunds and I presented our understanding of the concept of blue crime, based on a recently published paper. The concept of blue crime is an invitation to think across disciplines how organised crime plays out at sea. It also has the objective to investigate how different responses interrelate and what could be done about the fragmentation of the response.

The Information Fusion Centre (IFC) based in Singapore is one of the most important international hubs for sharing information on the maritime domain. It enhances the global understanding what issues at sea need attention.

One element of this work are frequent events for maritime stakeholders and an interested public. On the 25th of November I had the pleasure to contribute to the 2020 Maritime Security Webinar.

At the seminar I provided an overview of maritime information sharing initiatives and discussed the numerous challenges these face drawing on my recent article on the subject.

Piracy, smuggling and illegal fishing are three blue crimes increasingly high on the international agenda. Such crimes have different expressions across the world’s maritime regions and affect human lives, political stability and economic interests in different ways, ranging from their impact on coastal communities to international shipping and even national security. What other crimes need attention? How are crimes linked to each other? These are the questions that we will discuss at a SafeSeas webinar on blue crime and the transformation of the maritime security agenda on Thursday, September 10th.

Watch the recorded event here.

From 17-20th of August I am participating in the workshop ‘Green water Opportunities in the Indian Ocean Region’ organised by the U.S. Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. The workshop revisits the core security and strategic challenges across the Indian Ocean.

In my own contribution to the event I draw on the first results from the TOCAS project, focusing on the Western Indian Ocean and in particular the problem of the continuing lack of capacity and the institutional fragmentation in the region. Contact me by email for a copy of the talk.

Our new research project AMARIS, Analyzes MARitime InSecurity in Ghana. Across 4 work packages the participants based in Copenhagen and Accra investigate expressions of blue crime in Ghana, national maritime security governance as well as capacity building assistance. The project is organised in three phases. To complete phase 1 the inception phase, we held our first larger meeting – the kick off day – on 25.06.2020. The main discussions were devoted to research methodology and data gathering strategy for the upcoming field phase.

One of the core objectives of our Transnational Organised Crime at Sea Project is to systematically review what kind of evidence is available on different forms of blue crime. In a recent event we investigated what kind of data is available on marine piracy and how it can be improved for different purposes reaching from early warning, incident responses, prosecution to trend analysis and policy formulation. Held on the 9th of June, we discussed the outcome of a report on piracy together with representatives from the IMB, shipping industry, UNODC and academia. Here is the video: