Report of Sexual Assault on Cruise Ship Shows Gaps in International Law

If a cruise delivers is a floating town, then the captain is its mayor.
But with regards to law and order, there’s no police pressure and no courts. That can leave sufferers of crime aboard the ship unprotected — as it is not clear which legal guidelines practice.
A mentioned sexual attack case aboard a Mediterranean cruise ship remaining week highlighted that prison ambiguity while a Spanish decide launched the detained suspect after the ship docked in Valencia. The choose declared that Spain had no jurisdiction within the case because the alleged crime turned into said to have taken place in global waters, in line with a record by means of the Spanish newspaper Levante.
If Spain can not prosecute, then which u. S. Can?
“There’s no reduce-and-dried rule,” said Frederick Kenney, the director of felony affairs and outside relations for the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations employer liable for international shipping safety.
“There isn’t any worldwide law that covers this case in the meantime,” he stated.
Maritime law establishes that a ship is a concern to the legal guidelines of us of a whose flag it flies. But for tax reasons and different felony blessings, few cruise ships are flagged with the nations of their home port, or maybe their corporate headquarters.
In the Spanish case, the suspect changed into detained aboard the MSC Divina, which flies a Panamanian flag and is in theory situation to Panama’s legal guidelines. In practice, us of a won’t have the resources to research crimes that take location a long way from its beaches.
But other legal guidelines in the area need to have covered the sufferer, stated Aleksandra Ivankovic, the deputy director of Victim Support Europe, a victims’ rights organization.