Frequent incidents of piracy and armed robbery in the Singapore Strait have led to the area being labelled as an area of concern by the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia (RECAAP) . The Singapore Strait is located south of Singapore, south-east of Malaysia and north of the Indonesian Riau Islands. The Singapore Strait is roughly 113 km long with an average width of 19 km. The Singapore Strait was the location of 65% (55 out of 84) of all incidents of piracy and armed robbery which occurred in Asia in 2022, marking a seven year high in recorded incidents of piracy and armed robbery in the area.
Between 2007- 2022, 11% of recorded incidents in the Singapore Strait were incidents of piracy and 89% were incidents of armed robbery against ships. There were 34 recorded incidents of piracy and armed robbery at sea in the Singapore Strait in 2020, 49 in 2021, and 55 in 2022; indicating a trend of increasing incidents. This trend goes against the global figures of piracy and armed robbery incidents, which are at their lowest level since 1994.
Distinguishing between piracy and armed robbery
It is important to highlight the difference between piracy and armed robbery to be able to determine both the extent of these offences, as well as the legal consequences that follow; such as who has the jurisdiction to chase, arrest and prosecute the perpetrators. According to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) definition, piracy can only occur on the high seas. Whereas armed robbery is not covered by UNCLOS and is defined by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as essentially the same act as piracy, with the important distinction that armed robbery against ships can occur only within a State's internal waters, archipelagic waters and territorial waters.
Universal jurisdiction is granted to every State to take whatever action they may deem necessary to apprehend pirate ships and to prosecute the alleged pirates as international criminals in their respective courts. Therefore, distinguishing whether an act was an act of piracy or armed robbery determines if an international response is warranted, versus a solely domestic response by the country which has jurisdiction over the territorial waters in which the offence was committed.
Historical difficulties of measuring the scale of piracy and armed robbery in the Singapore Strait The Singapore Strait is entirely within the territorial waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. meaning that technically speaking, the recorded incidents in the Singapore Strait are incidents of armed robbery and not piracy as defined by UNCLOS. While this may seem straightforward, there has been a high degree of uncertainty for many years regarding how many piratical attacks have actually been committed in the Singapore Strait. This is due to the fact that multiple news agencies, and influential segments of both the shipping and maritime insurance industries were using a different definition of piracy, which was set by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).
The IMB opted for a view which they held from 1992 to 2009, in which piracy could occur on the high seas, as well as in territorial waters. The IMB argued that the exact technicalities of the definition have no relevance to victims of piracy, and that the majority of piratical acts occur within the territorial waters of sovereign states in modern times. The influence of the IMB throughout the 1992 to 2006 period in the Singapore Strait was significant as indicated by the domination of their definition of piracy in public discourse, the media, and the shipping sector.
As a result of the conflicting definitions used by the IMO and the IMB which were both competing and credible sources, there was a lot of uncertainty as to the actual level of piracy occurring in the Singapore Strait. If there were indeed high levels of piracy occurring as defined by the IMB, then all nations under international law had the authority to protect the Singapore Strait, and in doing so would encroach on the sovereignty of Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia over their coastal waters, whereas if these acts were actually armed robbery against ships as the IMO argued, then the responsibility to deal with them would rest mainly with Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Internationalizing the security of the Singapore Strait was a development which Singapore was in support of, whereas Malaysia and Indonesia did not want to have their national sovereignty encroached upon and were openly against it.