Maritime piracy disrupts international navigation and trade and threatens the lives and property of people of many nations. Several international organizations including the United Nations Security Council, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the International Maritime Organization and the European Union have been actively engaged in addressing this grave problem. Navies from the EU and NATO and from several countries, including the United States, Russia, India, Japan and South Korea, have deployed their warships off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden to protect trade routes because of the recent upsurge of attacks on ships by Somali Pirates. This Article endeavors to establish a framework for individual nations and the international community to respond to pirate attacks in Somali coastal waters. Because many acts of piracy occur initially on the high seas outside Somalia's territorial waters, these acts fall most prominently within the scope of the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention(LOS) and the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (SUA). Accordingly, when permissible, individual nations falling victim to pirate attacks should seek to arrest and prosecute pirates in their national courts under these principal maritime conventions.

To address the challenge posed by pirates, the United Nations Security Council has adopted several resolutions authorizing states to take the necessary actions to combat piracy, including in the territorial waters of Somalia. Norms prescribed under several conventions including the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention(UNCLOS), maritime law, and domestic laws of various states provide for jurisdiction by states to prosecute and punish pirates. By the way, current domestic, regional and international legal frameworks fail to adequately combat the nature and scale of maritime piracy. Until now, states and international legal institutions have addressed the piracy problem through a series of conventions, treaties, resolutions and regional agreements. Without a uniform, comprehensive legal framework, states have attempted to tackle piracy as best they can. These limited approaches highlight the deficiencies of international anti-piracy instruments. Thus there is a need for a definitive, international, body of law to systematically govern this field.

This article is divided into five parts. Part I is the introduction. Part II briefly reviews the political situation and piracy activities of Somalia. Part III explores the legal framework applicable to piracy and a review of the wide range of international and regional responses to prevent and deter acts of piracy and punish the pirates. Part IV examines the operations which have been coordinated by NATO, the EU, and a coalition led by the United States, in addition to several countries operating on their own. The concluding Part V contains the limitation on the regulation of piracy by international law and the recommendations.