Maritime security has received unprecedented attention within the United Nations agenda. In 2025, the UN Security Council held two high-level meetings with more than 120 countries taking the floor. Three elected Council members — Bahrain, Greece and Panama — have maritime security as their priority and have committed to strengthening the debate. Momentum is set to continue with an open Security Council debate scheduled later this month.
The discussions have confirmed an emerging international consensus that the UN system should address this agenda more systematically and strategically. Maritime security is increasingly understood as a global responsibility to protect the sea; ensure freedom of navigation and safe passage for international trade; fight blue crimes, such as piracy; and safeguard marine ecosystems.
Achieving these objectives requires a comprehensive, multi-level approach spanning national, regional, and global frameworks. The effectiveness of the UN system — its coordination with regional actors, its support to Member States, and its capacity to respond to maritime emergencies — remains critical.
But how can the UN system be further strengthened to address both traditional and emerging maritime security challenges? Closing persistent gaps will be essential to ensure strategic coherence, long-term sustainability, and greater foresight.
This leads to concrete reform proposals which are modest in ambition, but significant in impact. The UN’s approach would be stronger through a thematic Security Council resolution, a Secretary General report, deeper in-house expertise, and mainstreaming the maritime security agenda.
Too many agencies, too little coordination
A significant number of UN agencies have developed programmes on maritime security since the early 2000s. A large and still-growing number of agencies, programmes and bodies — each with their own mandate, funding stream, and reporting line — deals with aspects of maritime security. Yet, none have a comprehensive mandate.
A first attempt to map the responsible agencies by UNIDIR has identified five agencies with large scale maritime security programmes (the Big Five), 19 other relevant agencies, and nine international organizations not formally part of the UN system. In addition, many formal and informal regional organizations work in the field.
While this breadth reflects the cross-cutting nature of maritime threats, it generates significant risks of overlap, duplication and governance gaps. There is no single entity with the mandate, authority or capacity to coordinate these activities at the global level, presenting a risk of competitive fragmentation rather than complementary specialization.
Capacity building gaps: Who trains whom in what?
Weak national and regional capacities in maritime security governance continue to be a substantial problem. This is a major challenge not only for countries recovering from armed conflict or grappling with development challenges, but also for small island states.
Major international investments in maritime security capacity building, technical assistance, and security sector reform have been made since the early 2000s. Much of this work is concentrated and run by the “Big Five” group of agencies. Yet, attempts to coordinate their delivery work remain limited in scope.
This may lead to programming that reflects the strategic priorities of providers rather than the needs of recipients, alongside risks of overlap and duplication, gaps in coverage, insufficient attention to long-term requirements and emerging challenges, and limited evaluation of effectiveness — including instances where “zombie projects” continue to absorb resources without delivering commensurate impact.
Data gaps: Towards a global picture of the maritime domain
This points to another important gap: the absence of an authoritative global dataset on maritime security threats and incidents to identify problems, assess responses, and guide priorities.
Reporting mechanisms by the “Big Five” are mandate-specific, fragmented across agencies, and heavily dependent on voluntary member-state submissions. Interpol and Interport Police facilitate operational exchanges, and regional Maritime Domain Awareness initiatives now provide near-comprehensive coverage of most ocean basins — with a persistent South Atlantic gap.
A growing share of maritime data infrastructure — satellites, sensors and data platforms — is commercially owned, improving access for some but raising concerns about affordability, equity and whether such data should be treated as a global public good rather than a commodity.
The UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime’s Global Maritime Crime Programme has begun to facilitate dialogue between different platforms and actors. However, there are yet no agreed international standards and mechanisms for international data exchange and fusion. This limits the ability of the international community to identify patterns, assess trends, and allocate resources rationally.
Making sense of data
Even where data exists, the UN system does not have an institutional home for the kind of expertise and strategic analysis needed to translate information into policy priorities.
Regional analytical centres exist — often focused on specific issue areas such as narcotics or sanctioned shipping — and ad hoc reports are produced by UNODC, UNIDIR, and academic institutions.
But these are insufficient substitutes for a standing analytical capacity with a global mandate. The absence of such a capacity means that international responses to maritime security threats remain reactive rather than anticipatory.
The strategic and foresight gap
Since 2000, the maritime security threat landscape has evolved through four overlapping phases, each introducing new actors and challenges:
- Early 2000s: an early focus on counter-terrorism
- Late 2000s: counter-piracy
- Early 2010s: increasing attention to blue crimes like smuggling and illegal fishing
- Present: a dominant focus on grey-zone threats
This current phase is marked by deliberate ambiguity, with state-sponsored or tolerated actors operating below the threshold of armed conflict and exploiting legal gaps, as seen in activities such as GNSS spoofing and jamming, maritime cyber attacks, and potential sabotage of critical infrastructure like undersea cables and pipelines.
These activities reveal significant norm deficits — areas where international law is unclear, contested or simply absent. They present unresolved and rapidly changing legal and governance challenges that existing institutions are not well-equipped to address.
The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis is a telling example. While it demands an emergency response, it should also invite strategic thinking on what future options are available to ensure safe passage for civilian vessels in strategic waterways during and after armed conflict. Options for future crises need to be developed, drawing on the lessons from past initiatives.
A concrete path to reform
Addressing the structural deficits identified above requires both immediate steps and longer-term institutional reform. The following measures represent a sequenced and politically feasible path:
Adopt a UN Security Council resolution on maritime security. Building on the current momentum, the Security Council could adopt a comprehensive thematic resolution establishing maritime security as a standing priority and mandating inter-agency coordination. The 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis provides a timely catalyst for action, and the elected Council members (E-10) could jointly lead the way.
Publish an annual UN Secretary-General Report. An annual report on maritime security trends, governance gaps, and system-wide activities could provide the analytical foundation for strategic decision-making and increase accountability across the UN system. Debates on the annual report in the Security Council and General Assembly could ensure sustained attention for a comprehensive approach.
Ensure appropriate liaison functions. Representation and liaison of all relevant UN agencies – notably the “Big Five” – in New York is important to enhance coordination and ensure expertise is brought to bear when needed. Remote participation can only partially compensate.
Establish a dedicated maritime security body. A section or division in the General Secretariat with cross-cutting coordination and analysis mandate is essential. Such a body could serve as a clearing house for data, a coordinator for information sharing and best practices on capacity-building, and a provider of strategic assessments to the Security Council and General Assembly. A few (seconded) staff members could make a major difference and enhance resource efficiency.
Create an expert network for maritime security. An expert network or United Nations University Institute could ensure that UN entities, regional organizations, and Member States have access to comprehensive expertise when needed. It would also help enhance analytical capabilities, cross-regional and cross-agency exchange of best practices, global assessments, and strategic foresight.
Mainstream maritime security across the UN System. Maritime security dimensions need to be systematically integrated into the UN Ocean Decade, the World Ocean Assessment, the UN Ocean Conferences, relevant peacebuilding and sustainable development frameworks and human rights work. Treating maritime security as a siloed ‘hard security’ issue disconnected from ocean health and blue economy goals is analytically incoherent and operationally counterproductive.
