International law on aircraft hijacking : the practice in Malaysia and Nigeria

Abstract

The offence of aircraft hijacking has been a major threat to the growth and development of civil aviation in the 21st century in particular after 9/11. Due to its consequences, such as loss of lives, properties, distortion of international trade and psychological disorder, the international community has come up with adopting successive international Conventions to suppress hijacking. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) also has adopted measures such as Annex 17 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation 1944 to prevent and suppress the offence. Malaysia and Nigeria are parties to these Conventions and the Annex 17. Despite this, there are cases of security breaches in these countries. For instance, the situation in Nigeria is serious owing to the incessant threats of a deadly terrorist group known as “Boko Haram”. This shows that implementation of these Conventions and Annex 17 in these countries requires further investigation. To achieve this, the research critically examines the application in Malaysia and Nigeria of these anti-hijacking Conventions and the International Civil Aviation Standards and Recommended Practices on aviation security (Annex 17 to the Chicago Convention 1944) in order to investigate whether they are properly implemented by these countries. The qualitative method of legal research is applied in this research, which includes content analysis of the existing literature and interviews with the aviation security practitioners and passengers in Malaysia and Nigeria. It also adopts the comparative method to make a comparison of the implementation of the aviation security measures in these countries. The research finds that aviation security provisions in Malaysia and Nigeria are adequate, but their implementations are inadequate due to the challenges of high cost of providing aviation security, and inadequate resources and human factor. It also finds that the consequence of these challenges is the security breaches in these countries’ airports. The research suggests that more funds should be injected into the aviation sectors in these countries to purchase modern day aviation security screening devices. Nigeria should adopt Public-Private Partnership to improve its resources in all the Nigerian airports.