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Home » International Courts, Law of the Sea

Another voice supporting a 'pirate court'

Submitted by on 17/06/2009 – 4:36 pm2 Comments

I just today stumbled across this month-old article reporting on the Dutch foreign minister’s demand for a UN backed tribunal for the trial of pirates in the East African countries. We have reported earlier on the apparent desire among certain (European) States to establish such an international court (inter alia to avoid any pirates being taken to those countries which would entail according costs and unpleasantness) and this seems to be another strong argument in the same direction.

I still fail to understand, however, how the States that support the creation of such a court could possibly be willing to come up with the necessary funding. We know from the two ad hoc tribunals (ICTY and ICTR) that the costs for such special judicial institutions is considerable. Indeed the lack of funding is the main reason for why these two courts have to close down soon. And even if a ‘pirate court’ would certainly come at a considerable lower costs that an ad hoc criminal tribunal, the lack of sufficient (material and personal) infrastructure in the countries where it would be situated would make it a costly endevour nonetheless.

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