Draft:Maritime crime

The term “blue crime” describes crimes at sea that are transnational and organized. . Such crimes are conceptualized in more detail as “[s]erious organised crimes or offences that take place transnationally, on, in or across the maritime domain and cause or have the potential to inflict significant harms”.

There are three main categories of blue crime :


 * 1) Crimes directed against mobility: They mostly target shipping, maritime trade, ports and supply chains. Piracy and cyber criminals are examples of this.
 * 2) Criminal or illicit flows: In these “transit crimes”, the sea is used as a means to conduct criminal activity between two points on land. Trafficking and smuggling, for example, of humans, narcotics, weapons or controlled substances, can be named for this category.
 * 3) Environmental crimes: These crimes harm the sea and its resources and often have secondary effects on humans. This includes activities such as Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing and pollution. Such crimes often impact people's health and livelihoods. For example, the loss of biodiversity through pollution affects fishers negatively since the number of fish which could be caught decreases.

These categories do not usually stand alone. Synergies have been found between them. As blue crimes are very similar in their organization and in the required material and skills, it is relatively easy to apply these to other categories of blue crimes. It is often already sufficient to have a boat with a crew that possesses the needed seamanship skills to conduct activities such as trafficking, piracy or fishing. Especially in the case of fishing, it can be difficult for law enforcement to determine if a boat is conducting it on legal or illegal terms. The clustering of blue crimes in certain geographical locations convenient for these activities provides another challenge in the fight against them. Such areas are often characterized by weak local law enforcement, busy trade roots, and choke points where the traffic needs to slow down, which makes it an easier target. The Bab el Mandeb which is located between Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia and Yemen can be named as an example. This route is of especially critical geo-economic importance and hence attracts criminals due to the vast number of ships which traverse it. These are then either targeted by blue crime or used as a cover for it.

Blue Crime and Maritime Security
To ensure maritime security, blue crimes need to be combated. Over the past years, international attention has risen to these crimes, and international organizations have started to address them. The UN, for example, first debated this issue in 2019. Since then, resolutions have been adopted on matters such as piracy, and further debates have been conducted on transnational organized crime at sea. Blue crimes have started to be viewed as increasingly significant aspects of ocean governance and maritime security. In the maritime domain, the concept of crime is understood through international conventions, customary international laws, a network of national laws and bilateral as well as regional agreements between states. Blue crimes pose a particular challenge to combat since they often take place in areas in which the jurisdiction is unclear. Due to the transnational nature of blue crimes, international organizations and institutions play a particularly important role in its combat. The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNODC), for example, created a maritime crime manual for criminal justice practitioners to provide its members with technical support on various transnational maritime crimes. This manual also includes terrorism, which, however, has to be viewed separately from blue crime.

To clarify, Terrorism is seen distinctly from blue crime since it draws its motivation from the will to achieve a political goal. It is, hence, politically motivated. The nature of blue crimes, however, lies in the motivation to make financial gains. Other than terrorists, who aim for publicity through their drastic and intentionally damaging actions, blue crime actors rather focus on the maintenance of their operations to gain as much money as possible and hence are encouraged to keep a low profile. Regardless of this differentiation, there are links between other issues in maritime security, such as terrorism or interstate disputes and blue crime. In the South China Sea, for example, illegal fishing, geopolitical competition and interstate disputes are interlinked. There also seems to be a connection between maritime terrorism and blue crime, as some terrorist groups utilize criminal activities to finance themselves through piracy or smuggling, which can be seen, for example, in the case of the Al Shabab group. Other examples include, in the Sulu and Celebes Seas, kidnappings which are connected to the Abu Sayyaf group

The most important international organizations in the fight against blue crime in general are UNODC and Interpol. The different categories are then addressed by specialized organizations such as the International Maritime Organisation when it comes to crimes against mobility, while the International Organization for Migration and the World Customs Union are responsible for the combat of criminal flows. The UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization combat environmental crimes. There is, however, still work to be done when it comes to the integration of international and regional governance systems to be able to combat blue crime more efficiently.