On The Mechanism Of International Law Against The Pirates

The international crime of piracy, especially the aggravating piracy off Somali, has deeply affected the maritime safety. To solve the problem, international cooperation has initiated. However, the legal basis to counter piracy, such as the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Convention for the suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (SUA 1988), have some apparent defectives:the definition of piracy in the UNCLOS has shortcomings, and the universal jurisdiction over piracy can not be well performed.Consequently, the definition and jurisdiction over piracy should be perfected. Meanwhile, the crime of piracy should be added to domestic legal criminal law system. Besides, the mechanism of cooperative efforts to counter piracy should be established under the current international legal system. From the prospective of international regime, on the one hand, the mechanism should be performed under the authorization of UN Security Council. The warships could strengthen the measurers, such as right of visit, to effectively cope with pirates; on the other hand, under the coordination of IMO, all nations around the Somali should work together to prevent and counter piracy. From the prospective of regional regime, the multilateral treaties, especially, the Code of Practice for suppressing piracy and armed robbery against ships should be well performed. To solve the defectives of jurisdiction over pirates, the regional court of piracy should be established, such as African Court for Piracy, to exercise effective jurisdiction over pirates in the Africa. In short, through the performance of a compound mechanism to counter piracy, the piracy on the sea can gradually disappear.The thesis can be divided into three parts:the introduction, the main body, and the conclusion. The introduction part mainly introduces the goals, positive effects, methods of research, the overall research situations and the existing issues. The main body consists of three parts:the first part analyzes the trends and characteristics of current international crime of piracy; the second part analyzes the legal basis to counter piracy, in which focus on the analysis of definition and jurisdiction over piracy under UNCLOS, and give reasonable suggestions to the performance of UNCLOS; the third part analyzes the method to perfect the mechanism of international cooperation to counter piracy. Firstly, the Security Council of UN and IMO should play an important role in the international anti-piracy efforts; correspondingly, the legal issues of international cooperation should be deliberately considered. Secondly, the trends and performance of regional anti-piracy treaties should be well perfected. Thirdly, in response to the Somali piracy, it is proposed to establish African Court for Piracy to exercise jurisdiction over piracy off Somali. The conclusion makes a summary to the whole thesis and presents a few reasonable suggestions to counter piracy.