All rights reserved. There are signs that this is beginning to happen. Ratification will make it easier for the governments to prosecute pirates.
Modern piracy is violent, bloody and ruthless.
It is all the more fearsome because almost invariably its victims are defenceless and far from the protection of the law. There is evidence that organised crime is behind some of the bands of marauders that prey on shipping in the coastal waters of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries. More than two thirds of the attacks reported to the International Maritime Bureau, a division of the International Chamber of Commerce, are in Asian waters. Reported incidents have tripled since the early 1990s. Most were little more than muggings at sea, with robbery the motive.