While various maritime facilities, such as oil platforms, in different parts of the world have been protected by private armed guards for some time, the privatisation of maritime security only recently received international attention, prompted by the increasing employment of heavily armed private guards to protect vessels passing through the ‘pirate infested’ waters off Somalia. Until then, international maritime institutions, maritime industry representatives and governments around the world opposed the armament of merchant ships. Yet, as state efforts to combat piracy off Somalia largely failed, sentiments shifted and PMSCs are increasingly employed to protect vessels. This trend is controversial and problematic because international and national laws often do not specifically address the provision of armed PMSC guards on board ships. However, as a result of the increasing employment of PMSCs off Somalia, new regulations of maritime PMSCs are slowly emerging, with Spain, for example, now allowing heavily armed private guards to protect fishing and merchant ships flying the Spanish flag in areas of ‘severe risk’.
This paper investigates why this shift in opinion towards the acceptance of private armed guards on board merchant vessels is taking place and how it affects and changes national and international (maritime) security governance. The paper suggests that allowing the employment of armed PMSCs is a significant step for three reasons. First, it changes the fundamental understanding of the peaceful nature of maritime trade, demonstrated in international regulations such as the right of innocent passage. Second, as heavily armed guards are needed to protect vessels it forces individual states to change regulations about the armament of private security providers not only on ships but in their territories in general because a ship is part of the territory of the flag state. Last, it clearly demonstrates the weaknesses and shortcomings in international maritime security governance.
