Non-Traditional Security Threats in Maritime Zones of Pakistan and Law Enforcement by PMSA: An Overview

Abstract

The new millennium has witnessed massive transformations within international relations and geopolitics. There is a paradigm shift from traditional to nontraditional in the concept of security and modern warfare witnessed in contemporary era. A notable thing is spatial dimension which can bring significant change to nature of non-traditional challenges and threat perception of states. This paper is an endeavor to evaluate the nature of nontraditional security threats in maritime zones of Pakistan and the legal instruments enabling Pakistan for countering these security threats. Being global commons, oceans are taken as shared responsibility supported the international law and different regulations. There are different legal instruments established to ensure and facilitate effective law enforcement in maritime zones of littoral states. Therefore, in that regard, the undertaken research aims at application of these legal instruments and to seek the role of Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA) for securing the maritime zones of Pakistan and ensuring safe navigation in its seas. This research is exploratory for which synthesis of grounded research and case study method is used by utilizing primary quantitative and qualitative data besides secondary sources. The identification of a number of non-traditional security threats in maritime zones of Pakistan and studying the countering strategies make this research quite relevant as there is massive reliance of states over maritime activities, global shipping and commercial activities through Indian Ocean being primary conduit for economic and communication hub for their sustainable socioeconomic development.