Citation

Peters BC, Paoli L. Acta Criminol. 2020; 33(1): 132-156.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Criminological Society of South Africa)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The harms of maritime piracy have never been systematically identified or assessed despite its persistence and serious negative consequences. In this article, the authors address this gap, by assessing the harms of piracy off the Nigerian coastline in the Gulf of Guinea (GoG), the current global piracy 'hot spot.' This assessment applies Greenfield and Paoli's Harm Assessment Framework to identify the harms of Nigerian piracy and associated activities; evaluate their incidence and severity; prioritise the harms and investigate their causality. The assessment is driven by a mixed-methods data collection consisting of a content analysis of more than 400 piracy incident reports compiled from multiple sources; expert interviews; and an extensive literature review. This study shows that affected individuals - especially local fishermen and seafarers - and small-scale fishing businesses suffer the most serious harm. This finding questions the current focus on the financial harms suffered by large-scale businesses and shows the merits of a systematic harm assessment.

Language: en