BIT’s 1st Annual World Congress of Ocean-2012 (WCO-2012)
Session Name: Maritime
Dalian, China
Law
Title:
"The use of private armed guards in the fight against marine piracy. A
legal minefield"
Dr. Kristina Siig
Title: Associate Professor
Department: Department of Law
Organization: University of Southern Denmark
Country: Denmark
Abstract
Since 2007, the pirates operation in and around the Golf of Aden have extended their area of operation to
covering more or less the whole Indian Ocean; an area which cannot be effectively patrolled by any navy
force. Instead, the only thing that has been seen to work is counter-measures applied onboard the individual
vessels, most notably that of physically arming the vessels. As most seafarers are not trained in armed
combat, this operation has normally been outsourced to private ex-military armed guards. Employing
armed guards as more or less a standard measure onboard merchant vessel has many-faceted and
complicated legal ramifications. First, the choice of law-issues are pivotal. Even if it is the law of the flag
state which settles if armed force is allowed onboard a vessel, often the armed guards are not citizens of the
flag state. And certainly, any presumed pirates they may repel are not. Furthermore, vessels will have to
traverse the territorial and internal waters of other states, in which case relevant legislation from the coastal
state will have to be taken into account. Second, even if the choice of law is settled, the subject involves
considerations of both criminal law, e.g. the extent of the right to shoot in self-defense, public law, e.g.
regarding the requirements for weapons-permissions for the vessels and/or the guards, and contract law, be
that in relation to insurance issues or the contracts between the ship owner and the guard. The speech will
highlight these conflicts and issues and indicate relevant legal (and meta-legal) parameters and possible
outcomes.
Biography
Kristina Siig is a maritime lawyer with a background in both academia and private practice. Holding an
LLM from the University of Aarhus, Denmark, she was employed at the Scandinavian Institute of Maritime
Law in Oslo in 1994, wherefrom she obtained her doctorate in 2003 on a thesis on arbitration agreements in
international disputes for carriage of goods. Upon returning to Denmark, she was first employed with the
Department of Law at the University of Aarhus, after which she went into private practice for a while,
working as a solicitor within the Maritime Law Division of Mssrs. Gorrissen Federspiel. In 2005 she
obtained a tenured position with the Department of Law at the University of Southern Denmark. For the last
three years she has been a part of an interdisciplinary research project regarding maritime piracy. She is
married to an English shipbroker, has three children aged 7 – 14, and lives in rural surroundings in the
Southern Denmark archipelago. She is still affiliated with the Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law in
Oslo, and handles cases in international arbitration on the side when time allows.