Maritime piracy, multinational cooperation, and a parliamentary reaction

This presentation will focus on the international response towards maritime piracy off the coast of Somalia in 2007-2012, and to perceptions the response produced in selected national legislatures. Countering maritime piracy off the coast of Somalia was a rather successful process that involved various actors from the United Nations to individual states and organizations. In the case of piracy off the coast of Somalia, existing international agreements gave only partial solutions to the problem. At the core of the international response was perhaps a more minilateral than multilateral process, in which an ad hoc body to counter-piracy was established to provide a forum for decision-making and transfer of information. Based on qualitative analysis of parliamentary discourse in selected national parliaments, this presentation will explore viewpoints presented at the national legislative level. In order to explore how members of national legislatures viewed both the United Nations and multilateral cooperation in general, and to which extent representatives perceived minilateral approaches especially relevant to counter such threats like maritime piracy.