Abstract
Piracy is not a new phenomenon. Quite the reverse, it is as old as sea navigation and especially maritime trade. As early as in the Antiquity, the Roman Empire organized military campaigns to destroy pirate ships that were starving the Empire despite the fact that piracy was considered an honorable profession. When the Roman Empire collapsed, and with it the 'pax maritima', piracy rose again and even found a niche with privateering as they could receive 'lettres de marque' to act upon a government's orders and attack its enemy ships.
Privateering was very common particularly in the Conquest era and Golden Age (17th and 18th Centuries) when maritime trade dramatically increased. In 1856, the Paris Declaration on Maritime Rights made it unlawful for States to hire privateers, leaving hundreds of pirates without an affiliation. Piracy continued until the present day. Nevertheless, the issue of piracy has appeared in the last few decades as a new and increasing phenomenon to many people, including scholars. The threat of piracy alerted the international community after the tragedies of the so-called 'boat people' formed by refugees escaping Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s and attacked by pirates.
In 1983, the International Maritime Organization officially acknowledged the resurgence of piracy, leading scholars and world politicians to focus on 'modern piracy' trends and how to deal with it. There is still great controversy regarding the definition of modern piracy, mainly about its distinction from maritime terrorism. In this paper, we will focus on piracy as an organized crime, and we will apply organized crime's most accepted definition of piracy: armed robbery at sea, motivated by profit and conducted by two or more private actors.
