Somali Piracy, International Customary Law, and the Dispatch of Japan's MSDF

The high occurrence of pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia has prompted an increase in the number of nations planning to send naval units to fight them. In the Asian continent, India has become the first to sink a pirate vessel, South Korea has announced the deployment early in spring of the 5,000 ton-class KDX-II destroyer Gang Gam-chan, and China is sending two destroyers and a supply vessel.While these three countries have shown no qualms about deploying their navies in the Gulf of Aden, Japan has once more embarked on a painful debate on the legality of such a move, with the government looking for a legal basis on which MSDF units might be deployed and a number of commentators doubting this would be possible without either a constitutional amendment (or of the official government interpretation of the Constitution's warrenouncing Article Nine) or the passage of new legislation

Customary international law · International law · Political science · Public international law · Somali · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law · Law, logistics, and international trade · Maritime Security and History · Philosophy