Southeast Asian waters are critical for international trade and the global economy. Combating maritime crimes has always been a priority as well as a challenge for ASEAN member states. While much emphasis has been placed on enhancing operational cooperation against maritime crimes, the need for an effective legal framework to combat such maritime crimes has not been sufficiently examined. This book demonstrates that ASEAN member states can establish a legal framework to combat maritime crimes by ratifying and effectively implementing relevant global and regional conventions. It also explores the issues that ASEAN member states, and ASEAN as an organization, face in establishing such a framework and suggests suitable steps that can be taken to address such issues. This informative and detailed study will inform research and policy, and will appeal to government, treaty and policy officials, academics, researchers and students, as well as international and regional organizations concerned with piracy and other related maritime crimes, ocean affairs and the law of the sea. Contributors: R.C. Beckman, W.L. Cheah, M.F.A. Ibanez, M. Jacobsson, N. Passas, J.A. Roach, C. Termsak, A. Twyman-Ghoshal, K. von Hoesslin