Abstract

Although maritime piracy has received considerable attention in both academic and public debates, the attention has so far been highly selective in terms of both piracy locations and impact. Most studies, in fact, concern a few prominent piracy “hot spots” (especially Somalia) and the impact of piracy on trade and the commercial shipping sector.

A novel data set of piracy incidents, the Piracy Victimization and Harms Database (PVHD), provides for the first time a comprehensive overview of piracy and its victims and has allowed us to shed light on facets of piracy that have so far been neglected. Drawing on, and expanding, an earlier dataset of Twyman-Ghoshal (2020), our database contains 6,925 cases of piracy that occurred worldwide between 2003 and 2022.

Drawing on the database, we first provide a global overview of piracy incidents, highlighting that many of them have occurred in locations that have so far largely remained ‘off-the-radar’. We then examine the types of vessels attacked, showing that a considerable share of them are non-merchant vessels, including passenger vessels, yachts, and fishing vessels. Finally, we consider the individual victims of piracy, point that many are fishermen, passengers and security personnel and discuss the intensity and severity of the harms they experience.

We conclude that it is high time for policy makers and law enforcement agencies to recognize and tackle these hidden facets of piracy.

Joining Instructions

The event will take place in person and there is no charge to attend. All welcome but please note that because if room capacity is reached, we may have to refuse entry.

Biography

Bryan Peters is a doctoral researcher at the Leuven Institute of Criminology at KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium). He is working on a research project titled, “Piracy and its control: assessing harms and appraising counterpiracy efforts across regional contexts”. He holds an MS in criminology (KU Leuven); an MA in political science from the University of New Orleans; and a BS in political science from Northeastern University. He worked in the field of law enforcement for much of his career as a criminal investigator, intelligence analyst and administrator. He has published articles on maritime piracy and other forms of organized crime in international criminology journals. His research interests include blue crimes, organized crime, harm reduction and crime prevention.