Organized Crime Sans Frontière: The Case of Maritime Piracy in East Africa

Professor Chockalingam’s inspiration and knowledge footprints transcend land and sea geographical borders in time and space. This chapter is a salute for one of the world’s most eminent pioneer Victimologists of our times on his 80th birthday by using this chapter to disseminate some unpublished findings from the author’s 2018 Master of Philosophy (MPhil thesis) entitled Analysis of Maritime Piracy in Eastern Africa between 2000 and 2010 and its impact on Seafarers Occupational Risk Perception. The research report documents an academic empirical research endeavor undertaken between 2011 and 2018 at Cardiff University’s Seafarers International Research Centre www.sirc.ac.uk sponsored by The Nippon Foundation www.www.nippon-foundation.or.jp . The study analyzed how the maritime piracy along the East African coast influenced perceptions of the maritime work environment by forty-four ship crew interviewed at a leisure center for off-duty crew in a port in the United Kingdom. Maritime Piracy is a global phenomenon with constantly shifting hotspots. This chapter seeks to explain how piracy crisis along the East African coast between 2005 and 2015 exposed the dichotomy and tension between the thriving global shipping industry and failed economy of Somalia operating parallel to each other in the same geographic area.