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From high-seas hijackings to illegal fishing to the illicit trafficking of drugs and weapons, maritime crime threatens economies, national security, ecosystems and the livelihoods of millions.
Below, find out more about maritime crime and what the United Nations is doing to prevent and respond to the challenge.
Simply put, maritime crime is any crime committed in oceans, seas, rivers or coastal waters. It can be a local offence – like armed robbery at sea or illegal fishing just off the coast – or a transnational organized crime, like when a criminal network ships cocaine from South America to Europe.
Some examples include piracy, illegal fishing, drug and arms trafficking, migrant smuggling, terrorism, maritime environmental crimes, and even cybercrime targeting vessels or port infrastructure.
Photos: Erik Lukas / Ocean Image Bank; UNODC Global Maritime Crime Programme; Kazi Md Jahirul Islam / Ocean Image Bank / Mangrove Photography Awards
It’s costly. Over 80 per cent of international trade – or 12,292 million tons of goods and resources – passed through a port in 2023.
Piracy, hijackings and other threats to vessel safety can force ships to reroute, causing global shipping delays. Higher costs for shipping companies on insurance, security and ransoms get passed down to consumers and reduce profits.
It’s dangerous. Terrorist groups and transnational organized criminal networks exploit maritime routes to move drugs, weapons and people. Undetected or unchecked maritime crime could therefore fuel the fentanyl crisis in your community, flood conflict zones with arms or even enable terrorist access to chemical or biological weapons.
It’s destabilizing. Illegal fishing or hazardous waste dumping can damage entire ecosystems, directly impacting the income, food, and health of coastal populations.
Maritime crime often happens out of sight, miles away from any shoreline or law enforcement presence. The sheer size of the oceans and seas gives criminals ample opportunity to commit and get away with crime.
Some states may not have access to technology to help them monitor their waters, like satellite tracking, Automatic Identification System (AIS) monitoring, or radar systems, which can hinder the detection of and response to suspicious vessel activity.
Laws and regulations penalizing maritime crimes may vary from state to state – or not yet exist at all – making prosecution and cross-border investigations challenging.
Successful maritime interdiction often requires rapid, synchronized action between multiple countries, something that is difficult without established cooperation frameworks.
To address these challenges, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) provides technical assistance to Member States in detecting, investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating maritime crime. In 2024 alone, over 8,549 maritime law enforcement and justice officials received training to improve their responses and prosecution of maritime crime.
UNODC also provided equipment such as AIS receiver stations, Coastal Radar Stations, CCTV, and Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicles (ROVs), to strengthen real-time maritime monitoring.
UNODC also ran simulated trials for judges and prosecutors and helped review legal frameworks to improve the prosecution of maritime crimes.
UNODC support facilitated the:
To learn more about UNODC’s Global Maritime Crime Programme, click here.
