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Threats to Southeast Asia's maritime security
It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain maritime security in Southeast Asia. A broadening set of stakeholders are contributing to maritime security as states improve their capacity, cooperation is at an all-time high, and states are improving their capacity. While some threats have been rolled back, others seem to have become more dangerous as a result of these changes. Longstanding threats are evolving while new ones emerge.

Despite stakeholder action reducing risk and harm associated with some threats, the problems have not disappeared, and it has become increasingly evident that no threat can be completely eliminated as long as disorderly activities continue in the region's seas. However, there are still numerous instances of these disorderly behaviours. In Southeast Asia's maritime security system, some threats are rapidly growing, whereas others are emerging as new priorities for its governments and other maritime stakeholders. In order to evaluate Southeast Asia's maritime security threats, specific threats can be categorised as improving, intensifying, or emerging. Improving threats are ones in which stakeholder action has lessened the risks and damages to the marine community. For instance, compared to fifteen years ago, piracy and armed robbery (PAR) have become less of an issue in Southeast Asia. PAR incidents have decreased in absolute numbers, but more importantly, in recent years, the most dangerous forms of PAR, such as hijackings, kidnappings, and wholesale cargo thefts, have not been recorded, and the attacks have been limited to petty thefts. Intensifying threats in Southeast Asia are those that have been present for some time but are now becoming more dangerous to the peace at sea and pose greater security risks for the region. These include conflicts between states, difficulties with marine refugees, illegal drug trafficking, environmental crimes, and natural disasters brought on by climate change. Emerging threats are those that Southeast Asian stakeholders are allocating more attention and resources to countering emerging maritime security concerns, even if the threat's immediate hazards haven't increased much. This is typically due to the fact that the risks and damages posed by the threats are either becoming more obvious or are otherwise receiving more attention from policy focal areas. These include cyberattacks, forced labour, IUU fishing, and occupational health and safety for seafarers.

Interstate disputes
Over the past 20 years, it appears that most territorial and maritime disputes between Southeast Asian states have stabilised. The majority of pending issues have been handled reasonably successfully and don't lead to conflict amongst claimants; many have already been settled. It is not uncommon for some disputes to make the news. For example, the Lahad Datu standoff between the Philippines' Jamalul Kiram III forces and the Malaysian police in 2013, or the friction between Vietnamese and Indonesian maritime law enforcement forces in undelimited waters are two examples. But these are isolated events that have little bearing on regional stability. Malaysia and Vietnam developed oil and gas jointly without being hindered by maritime disputes, and Malaysia and the Philippines aren't hindered in protecting marine turtles due to their sovereignty disputes in North Borneo/Sabah.

South China Sea
The South China Sea disputes are a glaring exception to this trend towards stabilisation. Three paths have these taken in their evolution.

Firstly, they are becoming more and more of a competition between maritime law enforcement agencies. As far as the confrontation at sea between claimants has been concerned, navies have played a significant role throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and to a certain extent the 1990s. As a result of military confrontations, there were two warship encounters in the late 20th century: the Battle of the Paracels, which took place in 1974 between China and South Vietnam, and the Spratly Skirmish, which took place between China and Vietnam in 1988. There were also incidents involving the navies in the 1990s, such as the 1992 Sino-Vietnamese oil exploration on the Vanguard Bank and China's 1995 occupation of Mischief Reef. As of the 2000s, maritime law enforcement forces, including coast guards and fishery surveillance organizations, have been assigned responsibility for the advancement and defence of state claims. Second, the disputes in the South China Sea have grown to be a regional problem with international ramifications. Conflicts at sea mostly involved China and Vietnam until the 1990s. The Philippines got engaged after China seized Mischief Reef in the 1990s. As early as the 2000s, incidents began to occur between China and Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia in the southern South China Sea. In recent years, as incidents have become more frequent in the southern part of the South China Sea, it is clear that this issue has become a regional issue.

Third, in the context of the South China Sea disputes, the emphasis on "lawfare" has shifted. Ultimately, the 2016 award of Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea marked a turning point in legal battle or "lawfare" in the South China Sea. Prior to that date, the question of whether China possessed historical rights and titles as represented by its nine-dash line was at the centre of South China Sea lawfare. Lawfare's primary focus shifted after 2016 to China's ability to defend its claims in a way that complies with UNCLOS (the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea). In spite of the fact that China refuses to acknowledge the award publicly, it has argued for maritime rights extending from four island groups it has defined in the South China Sea (“Four Sha”), the Paracels, the Spratlys, Pratas Island, and Macclesfield Bank, using UNCLOS terminology instead of the nine-dash line.

IUU fishing
The threat of Illegal Unreported and Unregulated Fishing has evolved over the past decade, despite signs that economic losses have decreased. Over $6 billion in economic losses were incurred by ASEAN nations in 2019 as a result of IUU fishing, with Vietnam and Indonesia suffering the most. Indonesia is one of the seven nations with the largest territorial waters and exclusive economic zones in the region and lost approximately $6.8 billion in 2015, $201 billion from 2013-2018, and $74 million in 2021. Based on the number and anticipated tonnage of fishing vessels involved in illicit, commercial, and recreational fishing, this loss represents a prospective catch of illegal fish. There has been a notable decline in the quantity of illicit fishing vessels apprehended by the Indonesian authorities, with only 38 fishing vessels in 2019 compared to 163 in 2016. Even though the number increased to 167 in 2021, it is still far less than the 930 illicit fishing vessels that were apprehended in Indonesian waters in 2014.

This drop in the projected economic impact could partly be attributed to more covert IUU activities rather than a decline in IUU fishing. Illegal fishing operations are simpler to identify if they take place in territorial seas. Since ASEAN countries are increasingly concerned about illegal fishing, it has now spread to international waters and Exclusive Economic Zones. It is more difficult to detect these practices due to the need for international cooperation and larger budgets.

Illegal fishing has been more closely associated with transnational organised crime within the past ten years. This is because it is increasingly organised, has connections to other crimes, and incorporates other criminal activities like forced labour. It was shown in 2015 that fisheries crimes are transnational in nature by a case involving Pusaka Benjina Resources, a company based in the British Virgin Islands but financed out of Thailand, which was found to have enslaved 1128 fishing crew members from Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

Piracy/Sea robbery
Since ancient times, there have been pirates who have pillaged ships that were transporting goods. Armed robberies against ships (PAR) and piracy still represent a threat to maritime trade today. As the 1990s and early 2000s wore on, Southeast Asia witnessed an increase in maritime piracy and sea robbery incidents. Each year, more than 200 incidents were reported, prompting Asian countries to seek broader regional cooperation frameworks.

One instance that stuck out was the October 22, 1999, hijacking of the ship Alondra Rainbow, which was registered in Japan. An armed speed boat loaded with ten criminals armed with knives and pistols boarded the ship hours after it left Kuala Tanjung, Indonesia for Port Miike, Japan. The 17 crew members were abandoned on October 29 on an inflatable life raft. On November 13, the Indian Coast Guard and Indian Navy boarded the vessel, now named Mega Rama, and arrested the pirates after the Japanese Coast Guard and Japan Ship Owners' Association appealed for assistance from coastal states. Together with the escalating PAR situation in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore (SOMS), these phenomena prompted Japan to advocate for an agreement among the Asian countries to combat PAR in Asian waters.

Generally, PAR in Southeast Asia follows the same rules, laws, and norms as elsewhere in the world, due to the fact that most of the coastal states are members of major international conventions such as the UN Law of the Sea Convention, the 1979 Hostages Convention, and the 2005 Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against Maritime Navigation. Anti-PAR governance in the region is distinguished by its cooperative approach, which improves enforcement capacity. A regional agreement to combat piracy and armed robbery against ships in Asia (ReCAAP) entered into force on September 4, 2006. This is the first regional agreement of its kind to fight PAR and promote regional cooperation. Information sharing, capacity building, and cooperative arrangements continue to be the core activities of ReCAAP's ISC for protecting crews, ships, and cargo from PAR incidents in Asia. By bringing together government agencies, the shipping industry, and the maritime community, the Center aims to eradicate the PAR threat in Asia. A spectrum of agencies makes up the ReCAAP network, including coast guards, navies, and maritime authorities, which deal with incidents of PAR within their areas of responsibility. It is the responsibility of all agencies in Asia to ensure that the waters in the region are safe and secure for trade and commerce, thereby bringing economic growth to the region as a whole.