ECPR

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ECPR

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The maritime safety and its importance to face organized crime actions on high seas.

Development
Environmental Policy
Foreign Policy
Human Rights
International Relations
Latin America
Organised Crime
UN

Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is remarkable to international law, consolidating coastal and archipelagic States’ jurisdictional waters, as well as rights and duties related to their sovereignty in these areas. Nevertheless, the 21st Century brought new challenges emerging beyond the limits of countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), in areas referred to as the high seas. The freedom of navigation assured by UNCLOS in high seas have been used to hide real threats to environment and illegal actions. For instance, the Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing conducted on high seas impact directly jurisdictional waters of coastal states, mainly in Latin America, compromising not only environment but the economic development of their countries. Due to high costs and logistics efforts needed, mostly far from Flag States of ships involved, the IUU fishing on high seas is unprofitable and undercover many others illegal activities like corruption, money-laundering, customs and fiscal fraud, slavery, trafficking in human, drugs, and weapons. The subsidies provided by countries interested in these fish catches reinforce overfishing on high seas and become illegal activities fosterers that remain occur hidden by fishery. The paper aims to study the maritime safety importance to lead actions to face these illegal activities and organized crime on high seas, because of this area's international character require joint actions by different countries on behalf of the safety of life and property at sea, as well as to protect the maritime environment from uncontrolled ships actions.