Child piracy is an increasing problem according to a Canadian research group. Around 33% of pirates are estimated to be under 18 years old. The Dalhousie Marine Piracy Project is focusing on developing tailored responses to child piracy by examining operational responses, law, socioeconomics, and information management. They are creating guidelines for naval operators on safety protocols for engaging child pirates to help prevent psychological harm to operators. Their goal is to curb piracy by pressuring organizers who employ children through legal actions like the International Criminal Court.

1. 6 Fairplay 6 June 2013
story of the week
www.fairplay.co.uk
Target: child pirates
Child pirates pose an increasing threat to maritime
security and are the focus of a Canadian research group
seeking tailored solutions, reports Girija Shettar
> With the proliferation of light weapons
and small arms, the recruitment of male and
female children as soldiers in armed conflicts is
rising around the world. The numbers currently
stand at about 300,000, according to UNICEF.
Marine piracy is expected to be no
exception to this trend. Recent research
estimates that while most pirates range in
age from 20–35 years, at least one-third of all
pirates are under 18 years old, with one in
three pirates in any skiff likely to be a child.
A younger pirate demographic poses unique
moral and legal threats, as well as responsi-
bilities, to maritime operators, and security
providers recognise that if the demographic is
changing, they need to know about it.
John Thompson is a founding member and
commercial director of maritime security
provider Ambrey Risk. He told Fairplay:
“Knowing the age of somebody coming at us
is really significant. If the age profile is
changing, does this mean there is a smaller
number of very experienced controllers,
with the implementation being done by
people younger in experience but more
willing to take risks? That is relevant to us in
terms of the threat profile that we face.”
The Nova Scotia-based Dalhousie Marine
Piracy Project (DMPP) was set up in 2011 to
focus on child piracy and is an offshoot of
Dalhousie University’s Roméo Dallaire Child
Soldiers Initiative. Taking an interdisciplinary
approach to the problem of piracy and its
impact on shipping and coastal communities,
it looks at: operational responses, law and
governance, socio-economic factors, and
information management.
The DMPP has consulted maritime security
experts such as the Security Association for
the Maritime Industry and is liaising with
shipping organisations with regards to further
involvement, particularly for data collection.
Fairplay spoke to lead researcher Professor
Hugh Williams and learned that along with
the project’s humanitarian and ultimately
business-friendly aims of stopping children
being lured into piracy, and rehabilitating
former offenders, the project is also
exploring a way to attack the backers of
piracy through raising awareness about their
use of children in a hazardous trade.
For those seeking to eliminate piracy, the
advantage of focusing on children is that child
pirates operate in international waters and
are picked up and detained by international
forces. Removed from the weak legal systems
of failed states, they become “not only the
responsibility of the detaining forces, but also
more accessible to programmes designed to
remove them from criminality”, states a
DMPP report published in December 2012.
With child pirates facing similar dangers of
exploitation and abuse as child soldiers, some
argue that “the employment of children in
piracy [should be made] a crime for which the
International Criminal Court [ICC] should
have jurisdiction”, stated the report.
But for this, child piracy would have to be
viewed as a crime against humanity, which the
ICC’s power is limited to, along with genocide,
war crimes, and crimes of aggression.
David Dadge, spokesman for the UN Office
on Drugs and Crime told Fairplay that while
the employment of juvenile pirates was a
matter governed by international laws
relating to the rights of children, including the
1999 Convention No 182 on the Elimination
of the Worst Forms of Child Labour, as well as
national criminal laws, it is not viewed from
“the perspective of crimes against humanity”.
The DMPP believes this should change. A
key benefit would be that “it would place
those organisers and backers of piracy in an
extremely dangerous legal position, as they
would be subject to international arrest
warrants and extradition to face the ICC …
High-profile criminal trials would make the
employment of child pirates an extremely
risky activity.”
Labour and employment lawyer Emily
Camastra, author of a 2008 paper on
hazardous child labour as a crime against
humanity, suggested to Fairplay: “The
strategy would be to get the ICC to recognise
that the pirates [forcing] children to work for
them is really a modern form of slavery.”
Currently the situation is far from being
this organised, with land-based initiatives
focused on building prisons and enforcing
criminal law – less sustainable options than
stopping the flow of new piracy recruits.
One reason for the long-decried ‘catch and
release’ approach of security actors is that
RoméoDallaireChildSoldiersInitiative
Carl Conradi:
standard operating
procedures are
essential for
safeguarding
security operatives
engaging with child
combatants
ing
ives
hild
DalhousieMarinePiracyProject
Professor Hugh Williams:
child piracy presents a new
approach to erasing piracy
Professor Hugh Willia
child piracy presents
approach to erasing p
the estimated number of under-18s employed as maritime pirates
33%

2. story of the week
www.fairplay.co.uk
> Minors on trial in 2011
Country
of trial
Numbers of
pirates on trial
Number on
trial under-18
France 6 1
India 61 38
Germany 10 3
Malaysia 7
3 (15 years);
2 (18 years)
USA 3 3
Source: Children and Youth in Marine Piracy: causes, consequences and the way
forward, Dalhousie Marine Piracy Project
rs on trial in 2011
mbers of
tes on trial
Number on
trial under-18
6 1
61 38
10 3
7
3 (15 years);
2 (18 years)
3 3
Marine Piracy: causes, consequences and the way
cy Project
the detainees are often children (people
under the age of 18, and often much
younger). Williams offered the example of
Canada. “It is almost impossible for a
warship to offer a juvenile piracy suspect the
level of legal rights they are accorded under
the Canadian criminal law. This is why there
was catch and release,” he said.
Similarly unsustainable is the increased
use of military warships and onboard
security guards. A new World Bank report
has stated that piracy costs the world $18Bn
a year; while shipping pays between $7Bn
and $12Bn a year to protect itself.
“It would be a lot cheaper to hire every
pirate in Somalia into a semi-professional
soccer league, provide them all with uniforms
and have them play soccer,” said Williams.
“The shipping industry is saying we need to
go after the piracy organisers and backers.
One way of doing this is to highlight the
employment of juveniles and children and use
it to get some action on the organisers instead
of just the actual attacks at sea,” he said.
Risks posed to maritime operators by child
pirates are physical and psychological. The
Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative
developed a guide, Child Soldiers: A Handbook
for Security Sector Actors (http://www.
childsoldiers.org/files/handbook.pdf),
providing standard operating procedures and
rules of engagement for land-based soldiers.
DMPP is replicating this guide for use by
naval security operators. It should be
released by early next year.
Williams explained that it supports
regular self-defence. “If you are being shot at
[by a child] you are going to have to shoot
back. What fails to get recognised is that
there [are] going to be some serious psycho-
logical consequences to that.”
Carl Conradi is a programme officer for the
initiative. He told Fairplay that both
hesitation to shoot and shooting a child have
created serious problems for land soldiers.
These include squad ostracism,
post-traumatic stress disorder, and problems
interacting with their own children.
“Proper standardised training can serve to
assuage the moral dilemma. … Soldiers are
better equipped to take preventive or
preparatory action so as to avoid child
fatalities. Likewise, if a soldier is forced to kill
a child, standardised training helps reassure
both him and his squad mates that he made
an acceptable decision,” explained Conradi.
DMPP’s operational responses team leader,
Mark Sloan, a former warfare officer in the
UK’s Royal Navy, will attend the IMO’s
Maritime Safety Committee this month as
an adviser to the Canadian delegation and in
support of any discussion of the initiative.
The DMPP report highlights
the case of the four Somali
pirates involved in the 2009 Maersk
Alabama hijacking. Three were shot in the
head and killed during the rescue operation by
US forces and are said to have been teenagers.
The sole survivor, who surrendered, was tried
in the US, found guilty and sentenced to nearly
34 years in prison. His mother is appealing.
She insists that Abdi Wali Abdulqadir Muse is
16 years old, in which case he could not have
been legally prosecuted in the US.
Fairplay 7
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