Why does piracy in the Gulf seems to be legally unstoppable?

[aenedleah10]

These pirates seem to thumb their noses at international maritime laws, are there no laws to prevent these incidents from happening?

[burdett]

Are there laws? Yes, of course there are.

The problem is two fold: first, most of the pirates are based in Somalia, which currently has a government in name only. There's nobody there to police their beaches and nip piracy in the bud before it gets started. In fact, most of those towns depend on the pirates as their main source of income, so they have a lot of incentive to let them do what they do. Oh, and the pirates lie that they are stopping big companies from polluting their waters, etc.

Second, you're talking about an area that is over 1,000,0000 square miles! That's a lot of territory to cover and there simply isn't enough manpower devoted to do the job. You'd need a few hundred smaller and faster ships to patrol the area to do an effective job.

I would assume that some of these bigger companies are going to start hiring private mercs to start escorting their ships through these regions. It'd probably end up being cheaper than paying the ransoms.

[caffar]

It's not that it's legally unstoppable, it's that the governments are too afraid of the pirates and of offending the worthless country of Somailia. There is a law that cargo ships should be un-armed, but the UN and the other countries have been so unwilling to adapt the law, that the pirates can do anything. The companies are also so willing to pay the ransom.

No one has a spine to stand up to these pirates and they know it.

[christos]

History shows that the only way to clean out pirates is to take their land bases away. That's how the Romans did it. (See Pompey the Great.) That's how the European powers got ride of the Pirates of the Caribbean. That's why the US Marines went to the shores Tripoli. Until then, it will fester. You can't do it from the sea only.