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This Paper was originally published on transatlantic.org
The contemporary maritime domain is increasingly recognized as a geopolitical and economic space, but also as an environment intertwined with human, social, ecological, and governance systems ashore. The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR 2024) report argues that maritime security has evolved from a narrow naval and state-centered concern into a multidimensional issue embedded in global human security. Likewise, (Piegon, 2025) considers maritime crimes, such as piracy, smuggling, and trafficking as extensions of terrestrial criminal networks rooted in exclusion and inequality. In the Gulf of Guinea, for instance, onshore unemployment and corruption enable recruitment into maritime criminal operations. (Fabinyi and others 2025), suggest that a more holistic approach to maritime security is needed that encompasses state, economic, human and environmental security to make maritime security more equitable, sustainable and responsive to contemporary social and environmental challenges.
This paper examines How are maritime security and land-based human insecurities interconnected, and what governance mechanisms can address them? It adopts a global analytical perspective but grounds its empirical discussion primarily in the Atlantic African maritime spaces, where the intersection between coastal poverty, illegal resources exploitation, and maritime threats is visible.
The paper proceeds in three parts. The first explores the conceptual framework that could be applied to the maritime land insecurity nexus. The second assesses the linkages between Maritime and land-based human insecurities. The third presents the key findings and some policy recommendations.
