Lecture Abstract:

Recent years have seen considerable activity around the region, in regional forums and elsewhere, directed towards the prevention and management of incidents at sea involving ships, submarines or aircraft of regional countries or the extra regional countries that send maritime units into regional waters. This is against the background of increasing risks of these incidents as naval and maritime law enforcement activity in the region increases and the region’s sovereignty disputes remain unresolved. Western Pacific navies, including those of all Southeast and Northeast Asian countries, have agreed to the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES), but this agreement does not apply to non-naval maritime law enforcement vessels or submarines. This seminar will review what’s happening in the region to improve the current situation, identify the lessons learnt and best practice with regard to preventing and managing incidents at sea, and make some recommendations about how current arrangements might be improved.

About the Speaker:

Sam BATEMAN retired from the RAN as a Commodore and is now a Professorial Research Fellow at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong in Australia, and an Adviser to the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His naval service included four ship commands ranging from a patrol boat to guided-missile destroyer. He has written extensively on defence and maritime issues in Australia, the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean, and was awarded his PhD from the University of NSW for a dissertation on “The Strategic and Political Aspects of the Law of the Sea in East Asian Seas”. He is a nominated member of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Expert and Eminent Persons’ (EEPs) Group, and is currently co-chair of a working group of ARF EEPs and other experts conducting a study of lessons learnt and best practice with regard to preventing and managing incidents at sea.