New Approaches to Old Challenges: The Case of the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia

The increasing attention paid to channels and structures of informal governance is driven by the complexity and multidimensionality of current problems and the abundance of relevant stakeholders. Despite the many definitions of informal governance, several of its key elements stand out: profusion and diversity of actors and focus on informal processes, arrangements and outcomes. This paper takes as a case study the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS), formed in 2009. CGPCS has been described as unique in the way it applies informal governance by creating a forum where state and non-state actors provide their input and harmonize their activities to guarantee the best response to piracy. Developing within the framework of informal governance, the paper also draws insights from discussions about epistemic communities as carriers of ideas. The stress of our analysis falls on the way human rights are incorporated into the Group’s discussions and policy recommendations. Human rights were chosen because of the overall importance of the concept in counter-piracy efforts and the attempts to mainstream it into policy-making by the United Nations and the European Union. The proposed paper could be positioned within two of areas envisaged for this workshop: mechanisms of global governance and informal governance outside IOs. The topic is closely related to my PhD research that explores the presence of the concept of human rights in the counter-piracy initiatives of the EU and the United States of America in a comparative perspective. Christiansen, Thomas and Christine Neuhold. 2012. Introduction. In International Handbook on Informal Governance, ed. Christiansen, Thomas and Christine Neuhold. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar pp. 1-15. Lessons from Piracy. Available at: http://www.lessonsfrompiracy.net/faq/ (Accessed November 18, 2015).