The Commission of Maritime Crimes with Unmanned Systems: An Interpretive Challenge for UNCLOS
Forthcoming in: Maritime Security and the Law of the Sea: Help or Hindrance? Malcolm Evans and Sofia Galani (eds.), Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd.
24 Pages Posted: 26 Apr 2019
Date Written: 2019
Abstract
Over the past decade, two developments relevant for international maritime security law have taken place: first, the security landscape at sea has changed considerably with transnational crimes now ranking high on the list of maritime security threats; second, the ‘robotics revolution’ has reached the sea with the advent of unmanned vehicles. Combined, these developments have led to increased reliance by non-State actors on unmanned systems to commit criminal offences at sea. This entails a shift from proximate to remote human involvement in the commission of maritime crimes – a shift that shakes the foundation of UNCLOS’ provisions on crimes at sea, which rest on the assumption of proximity. This triggers the question whether UNCLOS is capable of accommodating the turn to this transformative technology. It is against this backdrop that the Chapter at hand carves out the various mechanisms intended to keep UNCLOS abreast of change. It concludes that the prevailing strategy – its evolutionary interpretation – is by itself a suitable method to keep the Convention in tune with the time, but not apposite for provisions of UNCLOS governing the suppression of maritime crime. It is submitted that these provisions, which came about from a marriage between the law of the sea and (transnational) criminal law, must rather be subject to a ‘rule of law’-based interpretation. This, however, considerably curtails the available interpretive space and the possibility of accommodating the ‘robotics revolution’ at sea within Part VII of UNCLOS.
Keywords: unmanned ships, autonomous ships, remote-controlled ships, unmanned vessels, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, piracy, interpretation, living instrument, ‘Constitution of the Oceans’
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