With regard to maritime safety and security, the agreement commits to manage accidents and incidents at sea and promote effective coordination between the association member states’ aeronautical and maritime search and rescue services; encourage sharing of expertise and resources to manage risks to the safety of vessels and the marine environment; strengthen regional cooperation to address transboundary security challenges; and ensure the freedom of navigation and overflight in the Indian Ocean Region in accordance with international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea

The Western Pacific Naval Symposium developed a Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea in 2014, with regard to guidelines and standard operating procedures when warships and military aircraft meet at sea unexpectedly. There have been calls for a similar code for the Indian Ocean Region as well, through the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium. However, successful emulation is unlikely, given the symposium’s high dependence on India’s funding and leadership, making the conclusion of a truly cooperative arrangement no easy task. If an operational-level confidence-and-security-building measure among regional navies such as Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea is unachievable so far in the Indian Ocean Region, how much more difficult is it for a political-strategic mechanism like a COC to be concluded?

Djibouti Code of Conduct

The Djibouti Code of Conduct is a regional instrument, originally designed to counter piracy and armed robbery against ships in the western Indian Ocean. It was later expanded through the Jeddah Amendment to cover other illicit maritime activities, including human trafficking and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. The participatory states work together, with support from IMO and other stakeholders, to build national and regional capacity to address wider maritime security issues.The more recently passed Jeddah Amendment recognizes the important role of blue economy, alongside the need to counter transnational organized crime in the maritime domain.

The contents of the above initiatives (both existing and proposed) encompass many of the key components of the proposed COC for the Indian Ocean Region. This is especially true of the more comprehensive Jakarta Concord. This raises questions of whether a dedicated COC is even necessary for the Indian Ocean as further duplication would only distract limited resources and political attention of regional states, and delay operationalization of existing commitments.

Conclusion

Initial responses to a COC in the Indian Ocean have been mixed. While there has been considerable support for the initiative by various country representatives at forums like the Indian Ocean Conference held recently in Colombo, diverse maritime priorities within Indian Ocean Region subregions and competing interests of actors resident and nonresident to the region, and the lack of an Indian Ocean identity/community have been flagged as potential roadblocks to any meaningful negotiations, realization and maintenance of such a mechanism.

The absence of a common driving force is another possible impediment. It was rising tensions in the South China Sea since 2010 that resulted in some ASEAN states calling for talks on the COC in the South China Sea to be expedited; China, too, agreed to accelerate talks only after the July 2016 Arbitral Tribunal. Similarly, China only conceded to a COC in 2002 after its first seizure of a feature (Mischief Reef from the Philippines in 1995) and had subsequently encountered more pushback from the United States and ASEAN states than anticipated. The Indian Ocean Region lacks similar crises at present, which are often essential to jumpstart such cooperative endeavors.

In fact, the Indian Ocean Region has been on several occasions a model for cooperation in the maritime domain. While tensions flare in the South and East China Seas, maritime border disputes between India-Bangladesh and Bangladesh-Myanmar were resolved in adherence to international law and norms. Piracy in the western Indian Ocean has mostly been eradicated by the joint efforts of regional and extra-regional states and stakeholders. Meanwhile, the Seychelles and Mauritius are conducting joint management of their extended exclusive economic zone. These minilateral instances of success may very well be indicative that such forms of cooperation are better suited and more achievable for the Indian Ocean than a multilateral code of conduct.

Rajni Gamage is a senior analyst with the Maritime Security Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Image: French Navy frigate FS Guepratte (F714) prepares to come alongside the USS Stephen W. Groves (FFG 29) as part of an exercise during Africa Partnership Station (APS) East in the Indian Ocean, March 14, 2011. DOD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class William Jamieson, U.S. Navy/Released. / U.S. Department of Defense Flickr