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.