An India–ASEAN Maritime Safety Framework could connect existing institutions, improve civilian coordination and protect vital Indo-Pacific sea lanes—without creating a military alliance or another regional bureaucracy.
Kolkata : An India–ASEAN Maritime Safety Framework could connect existing institutions, improve civilian coordination and protect vital Indo-Pacific sea lanes—without creating a military alliance or another regional bureaucracy.The Indo-Pacific’s economic vitality depends heavily on uninterrupted maritime routes, particularly the critical passages connecting the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea. For more than a decade, dialogue between India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has focused on economic integration, connectivity and the sustainable use of marine resources under the “Blue Economy” banner.
While these initiatives have expanded interregional engagement, they frequently assume a baseline of maritime stability that non-traditional threats—including accidents, illegal fishing, armed robbery, environmental disasters and infrastructure disruption—can steadily erode.
Moving maritime cooperation beyond trade policy towards an operational safety framework has therefore become a strategic necessity. This does not require constructing an entirely new regional architecture. India and ASEAN already engage through a dense network of declarations, multilateral forums, information-sharing centres and maritime exercises.
The central challenge is to identify and close the operational gaps that persist in maritime information-sharing, search and rescue, disaster response, fisheries enforcement, anti-piracy coordination and the protection of critical sea-based infrastructure. An India–ASEAN Maritime Safety Framework could connect existing mechanisms and convert broad policy commitments into effective operational coordination.
From the Blue Economy to Maritime Safety
A clear distinction among the Blue Economy, maritime safety and maritime security is essential for effective governance. Treating these concepts interchangeably blurs the boundaries between sustainable economic development, civilian operational safety, law enforcement and naval defence.
The Blue Economy concerns economic growth and environmental sustainability across fisheries, coastal tourism, marine biotechnology, shipping and ocean energy. Maritime safety encompasses seamanship, navigational safety, accident prevention, search and rescue, protection of life at sea and the mitigation of marine pollution.
Maritime security, by contrast, covers state sovereignty, naval defence, freedom of navigation, protection against interstate aggression, civilian maritime law enforcement and responses to non-traditional threats such as illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, piracy and armed robbery against ships.
Failure to maintain maritime safety can carry severe human and economic consequences. A major collision or grounding in the Malacca Strait could disrupt an important energy and commercial corridor, producing cascading supply-chain losses. Oil spills and other forms of marine pollution can damage coastal habitats, artisanal fishing livelihoods and tourism. Submarine cables carry the overwhelming majority of intercontinental digital communications, making their resilience essential to cross-border data flows and international financial transactions.
Framing safety as the operational foundation of the Blue Economy can turn abstract commitments into practical, everyday risk management.
Mapping the Existing Institutional Architecture
India and ASEAN already interact through several institutions and policy arrangements.
The ASEAN–India Joint Statement on Maritime Cooperation, adopted at the 20th ASEAN–India Summit on September 7, 2023, establishes commitments covering maritime safety, marine environmental protection, blue-economy cooperation, information exchange and capacity-building.
The ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, adopted in June 2019, identifies maritime cooperation as one of its four principal areas and stresses ASEAN centrality, openness, inclusivity and respect for international law.
The ASEAN Regional Forum provides a platform for confidence-building and dialogue, including inter-sessional discussions on maritime security and disaster management. The ADMM-Plus Experts’ Working Groups
address maritime security and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief across participating defence establishments.
At the operational level, the inaugural ASEAN–India Maritime Exercise was held in May 2023. According to India’s Press Information Bureau, its sea phase concluded in the South China Sea on May 8, 2023, involving approximately 1,400 personnel aboard nine ships.
The ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre, established in Singapore in 2006 under the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia, tracks incidents, circulates alerts and supports cooperation among participating governments.
The AHA Centre functions as ASEAN’s principal coordinating institution for disaster management and humanitarian assistance, while India’s Information Fusion Centre–Indian Ocean Region
tracks commercial shipping and non-traditional maritime threats across the Indian Ocean Region.
This architecture is substantial, but it remains dispersed across diplomatic, defence, law-enforcement and humanitarian platforms. Existing declarations establish broad commitments, yet the publicly available documents reviewed for this article do not set out a common ASEAN–India system of operational procedures for incident reporting, evidence-sharing or coordinated responses.
Military platforms such as ADMM-Plus also operate alongside civilian mechanisms involving coast guards, maritime police and information centres. Differences in classification rules, technical capacity and national data-sharing policies can constrain the timely exchange of operational maritime information.
Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing
IUU fishing threatens marine ecosystems, coastal economies and food security across the Indo-Pacific. Effective policy must nevertheless distinguish among different forms of activity.
Small-scale fishers may cross poorly marked maritime boundaries unintentionally because of inadequate navigation equipment, weather conditions or shifting fish stocks. Industrial “dark fleets,” by contrast, may deactivate Automatic Identification System transponders, conduct unrecorded transshipment or operate through opaque ownership structures. A third category concerns fishing within contested exclusive economic zones, where overlapping maritime claims complicate enforcement.
Treating every detained traditional fisher as a security threat can undermine human rights and regional trust. Small-scale infractions should be addressed through humane detention procedures, consular access, rapid identity verification and timely repatriation. Industrial violations require stronger vessel monitoring, port inspections, evidence preservation and cooperation among enforcement agencies.
The 2009 FAO Agreement on Port State Measures provides an important international benchmark for preventing illegally caught fish from entering markets through ports. Its application within an India–ASEAN framework must, however, recognise that participating states have differing treaty positions and levels of implementation.
Cooperation should therefore concentrate on flexible capacity-building, vessel-tracking systems, fisheries-data exchange and compatible inspection practices.
Piracy, Armed Robbery and Maritime Crime
Legal precision is essential when discussing maritime crime. Under Article 101 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, piracy involves specified illegal acts committed for private ends on the high seas or outside the jurisdiction of any state.
Armed robbery against ships, by contrast, occurs within a state’s internal waters, archipelagic waters or territorial sea, as reflected in the International Maritime Organization’s framework.
Describing the entire Indo-Pacific as “piracy-prone” obscures local patterns and jurisdictional differences. The ReCAAP ISC Half-Yearly Report 2026 recorded 35 incidents of armed robbery against ships in Asia between January and June 2026—a 64% decline from the 96 incidents reported during the corresponding period of 2025. No high-seas piracy incident was recorded during the 2026 reporting period.
The Straits of Malacca and Singapore accounted for 21 of the 35 incidents, or 60% of the regional total. Although the corridor remains an area of concern, the number of incidents there fell considerably compared with the first half of 2025.
The report also recorded no crew-abduction-for-ransom incident in the Sulu-Celebes Seas during January–June 2026, continuing the absence of such incidents in recent years. These distinctions matter: reliable, geographically specific information allows authorities to deploy targeted law-enforcement patrols instead of defaulting to heavy naval responses.
Search and Rescue and Disaster Response
The Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asian waters face cyclones, tsunamis, vessel collisions, engine failures and hazardous-material spills. India and ASEAN member states consequently require operational interoperability during maritime emergencies.
Article 98 of UNCLOS calls upon coastal states to promote adequate and effective search-and-rescue services and, where circumstances require, cooperate with neighbouring states through regional arrangements.
The AHA Centre already coordinates disaster relief within ASEAN. Connecting this structure more closely with Indian humanitarian capabilities could involve live-at-sea exercises incorporating coast guards, medical evacuation teams and civilian rescue agencies.
A formal partnership could also facilitate Indian contributions—such as emergency medical supplies and water-purification equipment—to ASEAN’s regional disaster stockpiles when requested and institutionally agreed. Indian Space Research Organisation assets and satellite inputs from ASEAN states could support weather monitoring, oil-spill tracking and rapid assessment following maritime disasters.
Maritime Domain Awareness and Information-Sharing
Maritime Domain Awareness requires converting radar, satellite, shipping and incident-reporting data into information that authorities can act upon.
Creating a real-time, all-source information network across India and ASEAN’s 11 member states—including Timor-Leste, formally admitted on October 26, 2025—would present considerable political and technical challenges.
Military-grade radar feeds are ordinarily subject to national security restrictions. Coastal states may also be reluctant to share unverified information about traffic in sovereign waters. Differences in radar coverage, satellite capability and digital infrastructure further complicate regional data fusion.
A more realistic approach would be an unclassified, consent-based system focused on “white shipping” or commercial vessel information. IFC-IOR could deepen compatible exchanges with regional information centres while allowing participating governments to retain control over sensitive national data.
Sea Lanes and Critical Maritime Infrastructure
“Sea-lane protection” should not be interpreted automatically as naval control or convoy escort. Within an inclusive India–ASEAN framework, it should mean navigational safety, freedom of navigation under UNCLOS, rapid incident reporting and resilience of civilian maritime infrastructure.
Submarine cables are vulnerable to anchor damage, trawling, natural disasters and deliberate interference. Offshore oil and gas platforms and expanding wind-energy installations require safety zones and active vessel monitoring. Congested passages such as the Malacca, Sunda and Lombok Straits require effective vessel-traffic management to reduce collision and grounding risks.
India and ASEAN could conduct shared risk assessments of cable corridors and landing stations, streamline lawful access for repair vessels and coordinate civilian monitoring near vulnerable infrastructure.
Act East, SAGAR and ASEAN Centrality
India’s engagement with Southeast Asia is anchored in three major policy frameworks.
The Act East Policy, announced at the 12th ASEAN–India Summit in November 2014, expanded the earlier Look East approach by placing greater emphasis on strategic and security engagement. SAGAR—Security and Growth for All in the Region—was articulated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mauritius in March 2015. The Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative, launched at the East Asia Summit in November 2019, is organised around seven pillars, including maritime security, ecology and resources.
Official Indian formulations describe these initiatives as complementary to ASEAN-led institutions. A maritime-safety framework would consequently need to remain anchored in ASEAN centrality, inclusivity and respect for sovereign decision-making.
ASEAN is not a uniform strategic bloc. Its 11 members have different maritime geographies, enforcement capacities and relationships with major powers. Cambodia and Laos, for example, have maritime priorities distinct from those of archipelagic states such as Indonesia and the Philippines.
In the author’s assessment, framing the initiative primarily as an anti-China arrangement or military alignment would make ASEAN-wide consensus considerably more difficult. Cooperation should instead concentrate on practical and comparatively less contentious priorities: disaster management, search and rescue, fisheries governance, armed-robbery prevention and marine-pollution response.
A Practical Policy Roadmap
India and ASEAN should strengthen connections among existing institutions instead of creating another large bureaucracy.
National maritime-safety focal points could establish direct communication between the Indian Coast Guard and relevant ASEAN agencies. Shared templates could standardise reporting of vessel distress, suspected IUU fishing, armed robbery and marine pollution.
Civilian exercises should include coast guards, maritime police, port authorities and rescue agencies. Annual live-at-sea search-and-rescue simulations in high-density corridors such as the Andaman Sea could test communications, medical evacuation and command procedures.
IFC-IOR, Singapore’s Information Fusion Centre and ReCAAP ISC could explore interoperable, consent-based exchanges of unclassified commercial-shipping information. Joint training could address maritime law, lawful evidence collection, vessel inspection and prosecution requirements while respecting national jurisdiction.
Regional protocols could also improve oil-spill containment, chemical tracking and environmental remediation. Cooperation on submarine cables should include corridor mapping, risk assessment and expedited repair access. Targeted assistance involving radar maintenance, tracking software, rescue equipment and technical training could help less-resourced agencies.
Progress could be reviewed biennially through an appropriate existing ASEAN–India senior-official mechanism, avoiding unnecessary legal and administrative expansion.
Conclusion
An India–ASEAN Maritime Safety Framework need not become another treaty-based institution or military grouping. Its value would lie in connecting mechanisms that already exist, closing operational gaps and enabling civilian agencies to respond collectively to shared risks.
The strategic case rests on practical cooperation: faster incident reporting, interoperable search-and-rescue procedures, humane fisheries enforcement, coordinated disaster response, safer navigation and stronger protection for critical maritime infrastructure. By working through ASEAN-led institutions and respecting national sovereignty, India can advance Act East, SAGAR and the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative without compelling Southeast Asian states to choose sides in major-power competition.
The next phase of India–ASEAN maritime engagement should therefore be measured not by the number of declarations issued, but by whether agencies can exchange information, rescue people, contain environmental damage and restore disrupted infrastructure when a maritime emergency occurs.
