NationStates Jolt Archive

The proposal to protect merchant ships from harm includes the following:

The proposal is intended to protect neutral merchant vessels during times of war, and from pirating. The merchant ships will have to comply with rules and regulations provided, and all UN nations will have to comply with also.
1.War
A. During times of war, no neutral merchant ship/vessel may be harmed, sunk, or pirated by nations involved in conflict.
a.1 In order to determine which ships/vessels are in fact neutral, it will be mandatory for every merchant ship/vessel to display a flag, symbol, mark, or
Any form of identification on the ship/vessel to help be identified. If a ship/vessel does not have a display of nation, they must send out a transmission, sonar and radio, to identify themselves.
B. If any ship/vessel displaying a mark of nation, or any ship/vessel who transmitted
An identifying transmission is sunk, harmed, or pirated, the aggressor(s) will be held
Accountable and forced to repay the losses.
B.1 Any ship/vessel not identifiable by mark or transmission gives up its
Protection from this law for failure of compliance.
C. Nations involved in conflict may still have the right to sink, or confiscate their enemies
Ship/vessels.
2. Piracy
A. In no way, shape, or form will piracy be tolerated by any UN nation on any ship/vessel, UN nation or not.
A.1 Piracy, defined by taking over any ship/vessel under forceful tactics,
Looting and stealing goods, and/or sinking.
B. Conviction.
A. Any nation who is found guilty on pirating charges will have their trading
Rights revoked immediately, and depending upon the severity of the crime, will
Be forced to repay for losses.
A.1 Individuals found guilty of piracy will be sentenced to a minimum
Of 5 years punishment, either jail or probation.

Let me know if you have any ideas to make it better, or if you hate it.
This is the first draft.
thanks!!

This proposal should really be curtailed to apply only to international waters. National waters are sovereign territory and a nation should be able to reserve the right to do whatever the hell it wants to any ship that enters them without permission, merchants or no. (As it stands, this policy would make smuggling by sea almost impossible to prevent).

'Pirating' should be modified to 'piracy'.

There should also be explicit penalties for any ship falsely flying merchant colours or colours of another nation.

Probably a worthwhile idea. Proposal itself needs some work, though. Semi-lazy typing follows...

I'd say that the definition of piracy needs some work. If any instance where any ship is forcefully taken over, sunk, or looted is forbidden as piracy, doesn't that interfere with quite a few things? Say, law enforcement and military conflict, specifically? And there's some loopholes; under this definition, as long as a ship isn't taken over and no goods are removed from the ship, there's no piracy, so strike teams could board a ship, destroy goods, leave the ship, and not be defined as pirates.

Should nations be obligated to police pirates based in their own ports? What about pirates based in other ports? Should there be an international force of some kind to combat acts of piracy on the high seas?

There's also some problems with the rules for war. Any nation sending merchant ships to an enemy nation is, presumably, aiding that enemy nation. Disruption of supply lines is a crucial tactic in times of war. If blockades can only legally stop ships from the nation being blockaded, what happens if that nation contracts to have ships from another nation come through? What I'm shooting for is, at the least, a clearer definition of what constitutes a "neutral" ship and how this can be effectively identified.