Maritime Security Challenges in the Indian Ocean: Special Reference to Sri Lanka

Maritime security is an umbrella term informed by security agendas to classify issues in the maritime domain that are often related to national security. Maritime security is one of the latest Buzzwords of International Relations. Major actors have started to include maritime security in their mandate or reframed their work in such terms. Non-traditional security threats are treated as a novel trend in the concept of security. The Indian Ocean Region has emerged as the world’s major energy and trade routes. Sri Lanka’s location is also strategically very important. The Indian Ocean region faces many traditional and non-traditional safety and security challenges. Such as piracy, armed robberies at sea, terrorism, human trafficking, irregular movement of persons, drug trafficking, illicit trafficking in wildlife, trafficking of weapons, IUU fishing, climate change, etc. The main objective of this research is to identify and study the challenges of maritime security conservation in the Indian Ocean as well as in contemporary Sri Lanka. The research problem is, how are the Indian Ocean maritime security issues in the Indian Ocean as well as in contemporary Sri Lanka. The Methodology that followed for this study is qualitative in nature while using both primary and secondary data. To collect primary data, a sample of 30 people has been used in the fields of government, academic, military, and other professionals. According to the study, as a challenges pose a threat to Indian ocean security today, increasing militarisation of Indian ocean’s strategic chokepoints, vast regions of the Indian ocean remain ‘unpoliced’, particularly the central Indian ocean, maritime awareness (MDA) is lax, increasing naval competition between some littoral states and major maritime users and ensuring freedom of navigation along the Indian ocean’s sea lanes of communication, whist closing these lines to illegal actors. Maritime terrorism, climate change, and environmental degradation, the unregulated exploitation of marine resources, illegal trafficking (arms, drugs) also the challenges Sri Lanka is facing today. According to the research, non-traditional maritime security challenges exist mainly in the contemporary Indian Ocean region and Sri Lanka. Moreover, currently in this region in the evaluation of its impact on political, economic, military, societal, and environmental security, the most alarming impacts can be identified on political security and environmental security.