Gränsen för tillåten användning av dödligt våld vid kuststaters interventioner mot illegala fiskefartyg

Sammanfattning: Fishing vessels are unarmed civilian crafts and thus constitutes no greater threat to law enforcing agencies who have greater capabilities. Still there are numerous accounts of coast guards firing live rounds at fishing vessels conducting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing during maritime law enforcement operations. The fact that this use of force takes place at sea occasionally results in such force to be used against foreign vessels, thus making it subject to international law since the coastal state is using force against another state’s civilian population. The traditional instruments of international law concerning the use of force (exempli gratia the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols) are not suitable for these kind of situations and therefore give little guidance when the incidents are to be looked upon from a judicial point of view. The phenomenon can be regarded as next to unregulated in the maritime conventions, thus precedent cases (many of which have no formal precedential power) and legal doctrine has been unusually important in shaping the law. This thesis reviews the most important precedents who have influenced the discourse of use of force (the I’m Alone case, the Red Crusader case and the Saiga (no. 2) case) and from them analogies is drawn to the context of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Some of the most important international conventions will also be presented (UNCLOS and COLREG). The current status of the law will be analyzed and the thesis will clarify how neither precedents nor conventions neither have succeeded nor seems to succeed to answer the arguably most important question a maritime law enforcer has: When is it allowed to use deadly force when conducting maritime law enforcement operations toward foreign fishing vessels caught doing illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities?