New article: A critical view on maritime capacity building

Off shore security challenges arise from on shore problems. This is a commonly known conclusion when it comes to maritime crime around the African continent.

On this basis, UN, EU and USA have amongst others engaged in capacity building in the Gulf of Guinea, fighting maritime crime through a strengthening of coastal guards and legal institutions.

In a new article in African Security Review, senior researcher Katja Lindskov Jacobsen applies a critical perspective on the current initiatives on capacity building in the Gulf of Guinea.

On the one hand, the article assesses the effect of the initiatives relatively to the ambition of strengthening maritime security.  On the other, it discusses the consequenses of this type of intervention with a special focus on local power structures and how it influences the recipient country’s way of prioritising security challenges.

Here a central point is that as soon as you intervene, you play into existing local power dynamics and ultimately may end up feeding into, rather than help settling, ongoing rivalries.

Read the whole article coupling critical security studies to maritime security here.