The Atlantic Centre has, since its foundation, sought to explore, study, and discuss overarching challenges that are collectively experienced across the Atlantic Basin. These themes must meet two criteria: they need to be multidisciplinary in content and multinational in form, reflecting both the complexity of Atlantic challenges and the diversity of actors required to address them.
Thus, and with the support of its signatory states, the Centre has designed and delivered courses on “Whole-of-Atlantic” issues. These have included Great Power Competition in the Atlantic (2023), Illegal Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (2024), and Climate Change and Security Challenges (2025). Building on this experience, for 2026, the Centre has proposed the theme “Blue Crime: Transnational Challenges in the Atlantic”.
Blue Crime has emerged as a contemporary concept that encompasses a vast array of illegal activities both on and off shore. While its limits are still evolving and its boundaries are not always uniformly defined, the geopolitical space in which these crimes unfold is undisputed. Framing blue crime within the Atlantic context is therefore essential.
The Atlantic Ocean is facing tangible pressures from multiple directions. These include, but are not limited to, IUU fishing, maritime piracy and armed robbery, illicit trafficking of narcotics and people, and environmental crimes occurring in increasingly complex operational environments.
In addition, owing to the changing strategic landscape, it is difficult to deny the role of new technological developments in the criminal context, and the extent to which they can be used for illegal purposes. In this regard, the role of non-state actors leveraging new technologies to assert strategic disruption and to develop new ways to pursue illegal activities, remains both a challenge to traditional law enforcement, international law and an opportunity to develop novel operational paradigms for coastal (and inland) nations. Enhanced maritime domain awareness, improved interagency and cross-regional cooperation, and the integration of technological and intelligence-driven approaches are increasingly central to effective responses.
Moreover, it is important to highlight that criminal flows at sea often traverse multiple jurisdictions, regulatory regimes, and levels of governance capacity. While there is substantial information available on specific blue crime, less is known about more recent intensifying trends, and how their impact asserts itself on the Atlantic geopolitical space.
Combined, these layers encompass what we refer to as a novel blue crime dynamic that is intersected by different criminal activities across the Atlantic’s strategic, economic, environmental, and human security landscape. The interconnected nature of some crimes further underlines that these subversive actions are not peripheral in their functional origin, geographic reach or cumulative effect.
The Atlantic is confronted with transnational maritime crime-related challenges on a yearly basis. In order to continue delivering timely, policy-relevant courses and research that tackles the concerns of the Atlantic Basin community, after having gathered the feedback of all 27 member-states, the sixth edition of the Atlantic Centre Maritime Security Course (VI MSC) will be dedicated to the topic of “ Blue Crime, transnational challenges in the Atlantic”.
This edition will be organised by the Atlantic Centre in partnership with the Maritime Analysis and Operation Center- Narcotics (MAOC(N)), the Luso-American development foundation (FLAD), the Portuguese Judiciary Police, the National Defence Institute of Portugal, the Gulf of Guinea Maritime Institute, in Accra, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research among other partners.
