Maritime Dimension of Transnational Organised Crime

Principal Investigator(s): Professor Juliette Koning

Project start: December 2016

Project finish: September 2018

Funded by: PaCCS

About us

Maritime security and the maritime dimension of transnational organised crime features highly on the policy agenda of Indonesia. In 2014 Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, presented the five pillars of his Maritime Axis Doctrine which aims to:

Rebuild Indonesia’s maritime culture
Maintain and manage maritime resources
Develop maritime infrastructure
Eliminate illegal fishing and piracy as a source of conflict
Develop the responsibility to maintain the safety of shipping and maritime security

In the same year, the Indonesian Government initiated a maritime security policy that designated the newly formed Bakamla (Badan Keamanan Laut, Maritime Security Agency) as the ‘guardian’ of Indonesia’s maritime security. More recently, the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Kemlu) published a report on combating Transnational Crimes in which it identifies illegal and unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing as a “new and emerging transnational crime” and announced an intensification of “enforcement and supervision of IUU fishing and other damaging activities in the sea” (KEMLU 2016).

These concerns lead the Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations (CTPSR) of Coventry University, UK, Oxford Brookes Business School, UK and International Organisation for Migration Indonesia (IOM) to respond to The Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security Research (PaCCS) call on transnational organised crime.

Part of

Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security Research

Research impact

The aim is to foster cooperation between coastal communities and law enforcement agencies in order to redress transnational organised maritime crimes in Indonesia and advance Indonesia's maritime security. Indonesia is investigated because of its unique maritime geography and the evidenced impact of transnational organised maritime crime on its national and local economies. Indonesia's waters are the scene of crimes such as illegal fishing, human trafficking, sea robbery, piracy, and smuggling. With its approximated 17,000 islands and 57,000 km coastline, the Indonesian land-sea nexus is crucial in the country's maritime security; it is on this nexus that coastal communities and law enforcement agencies meet. The project compares and relates the different attitudes of these two main 'actors' in the fields of transnational organised crime and maritime security and aspires to translate the findings into operational programmes and advance solutions based in enhanced understandings of the perception and practices of Indonesia's coastal communities and enforcement agencies.

To achieve this overall aim, the interrelated objectives of the research project are the following:

To investigate the coastal communities' and law enforcement agency's understanding of the maritime dimension of transnational organised crime
To assess and improve the efficiency of law enforcement in the maritime domain
To recommend more effective and cooperative solutions that include coastal communities in combatting maritime crimes
To base those recommendations on interdisciplinary research that involves coastal communities and enforcement agencies in the research process.

Project aims

This research project aims is to foster cooperation between coastal communities and law enforcement agencies in order to redress transnational organised maritime crimes in Indonesia and advance Indonesia's maritime security. Indonesia is investigated because of its unique maritime geography and the evidenced impact of transnational organised maritime crime on its national and local economies. Indonesia's waters are the scene of crimes such as illegal fishing, human trafficking, sea robbery, piracy, and smuggling. With its approximated 17,000 islands and 57,000 km coastline, the Indonesian land-sea nexus is crucial in the country's maritime security; it is on this nexus that coastal communities and law enforcement agencies meet. The project compares and relates the different attitudes of these two main 'actors' in the fields of transnational organised crime and maritime security and aspires to translate the findings into operational programmes and advance solutions based in enhanced understandings of the perception and practices of Indonesia's coastal communities and enforcement agencies.

Methodology

The coastal community members and governmental law enforcers will express their experiences and practices with regards to maritime crimes and law enforcement tools that they identify as relevant to maritime security.

Creative focus group as a method will be used as it allows the participants to respond to each other on issues that are relevant to all. The focus groups (facilitated by the research team) include a visual element in order to allow the participants to express and contextualise their position within the broader realm of maritime insecurities.

Through the creation of collages and the explanation of those collages, the participants are actively engaged in contextualising the problem, perceiving the impact of maritime criminal activities on their own security and livelihoods, and contemplating their role in combating crime and in increasing maritime security.

Research activities

Stage one: Preparation, inception and first analysis with complete research team

Participatory visual focus group with selected coastal community members and with selected governmental law enforcement agencies.

Milestone: identification of the main research direction on the basis of the collages and first articulation of contextual dimensions of the maritime dimension of transnational organised crime by research participants.

Stage two: Engaging Indonesian law enforcement agencies and coastal communities in the Land-Sea Nexus

In December 2017 we were in Indonesia for the second stage of our ESRC/AHRC funded PaCCS (Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security) research project on “The Maritime Dimension of Transnational Organised Crime”. After our initial round of creative inception workshops earlier in 2017 with fishing community leaders from different Indonesian islands and with law enforcement organizations in Jakarta (sea police, ministry of marine affairs and fisheries, migration office etc.) to provide direction for the research, this second stage saw the researchers (Juliette Koning, Oxford Brookes Business School; Math Noortmann, Coventry University; researchers from Universitas Indonesia’s faculty of Law and from the International Organization for Migration Indonesia) travel to the various locations in Indonesia to discuss in more detail the main issues from phase one.

During inception workshops three issues emerged that were taken forward in this second phase:

The local dimension of transnational organised crime [illegal fishing, smuggling of drugs, and trafficking of people]
Cooperation (or lack of it) between the fishing communities and law enforcement agencies [information sharing]
Education, awareness, understanding, expectations [legal, fishing, technical, and operational]

The second fieldwork phase included creative collage-making in each of the fishing communities and follow-up interviews with each of the law enforcement agencies so as to create space for them to be more outspoken about their own role and that of other law enforcers.

The researchers also did ad hoc conversations in each of the fishing communities and nearby harbours.

The research outcomes (still to be closely analysed) hint at:

Transnational labour exploitation and human trafficking activities (for economic reasons)
Difficult communication, dialogue and cooperation between fishing communities and law enforcement organisations (trust, information sharing, support)
Blurring lines between unlawful and criminal activities (IUU fishing, or illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing)
Willingness to address illegal activities but lack of resources and coordination among law enforcement organisations
The research uses what we refer to as collage-making which worked out quite well in most cases offering alternative ways to discuss some of the more sensitive issues at stake. ‘Collage’ is a popular art form which was cultivated by Pablo Picasso and George Braque in the early 20th century. As a visual research methodology however, collage–making is still under-used in the social sciences and humanities. We use it in our project as a creative tool for exploring primary knowledge, opinions and ideas, which would otherwise be tainted by the politics of dialogue and discussion, and the practices of the ‘speech act’. We argue that collage-making offers an egalitarian way of knowledge production. We do so based on the critical understanding that research and research outcomes need to be more inclusive of our research participants’ viewpoints, questions, and voice. We have specifically used the collage-making technique in order to level the playing field in Focus Group discussions and to get participants out of their comfort zone of traditional conversation.

We provided the focus group participants with the means to make a collage. Scissors, glue, magazines, sticky notes and different markers offered the possibility of creative visual expression.

The creative outcomes were the products of both preconceived ideas as well as new, innovative understandings which were triggered by the images that the participants saw while flipping through the magazines. The images that were chosen to become part of the collage were integrated in different manners reflecting the multiple ways of picturing maritime crimes and security.

We then invited the individual participants to explain their collages, which resulted in different verbal expressions. In the ensuing discussions, questions were asked on the basis of the collages rather than the verbal explanations. While the explanations provide us with the traditional tool of transcribed language, the collages provide us with a new and innovative visual method to analyse and interpret the opinions and the ‘voices’ of a range of participating stakeholders.

Stage three: Interdisciplinary data analysis and reporting by complete research team

The various data sets (visual, text) will be interpreted using contextual analysis.

Milestones: draft policy report, newspaper article, and short pieces for practitioner outlets as well as the draft poster(s) to be discussed in next stage.

Stage four: Preparation participatory workshop and final reporting by complete team

Workshop with coastal community members and governmental law enforcement agencies to discuss findings and articulate recommendations.

Milestones: final poster(s) to be used for educational and informative purposes and raising awareness of the maritime dimension of transnational organised crime. Drafting of academic and policy papers.