Academic-policy collaboration sheds new light on security in the Western Indian Ocean
A new policy brief co-authored by Professor Kate Sullivan de Estrada, Associate Professor in the International Relations of South Asia at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA), alongside prominent Mauritian maritime security expert Pascaline Alexandre, and senior Indian Ocean Commission official Raj Mohabeer explores security challenges and responses in one of the world’s most strategically important maritime regions: the Western Indian Ocean. The publication comes at a time when maritime security is high on the global agenda due to conflict in the Gulf, and its impact on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Co-authors Kate Sullivan de Estrada and Raj Mohabeer (Pascaline Alexandre not pictured)
Published by the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC), A Maturing Maritime Order: the Regional Maritime Security Architecture of the Western Indian Ocean provides the most comprehensive account to date of the Regional Maritime Security Architecture (RMSA), a regionally led framework coordinating responses to maritime security challenges across the Western Indian Ocean.
Where the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Indo-Pacific converge, the Western Indian Ocean sits at the heart of global trade and energy flows. Around 12% of global trade — including a substantial share of global oil exports — passes through the region each year. Disruption in the region can therefore have far-reaching consequences for international commerce, food security, environmental protection, and geopolitical stability.
At the same time, the region faces growing challenges including piracy, illegal fishing, trafficking, environmental degradation, and maritime crime. Responses to these issues increasingly depend on regional cooperation, and the policy brief explores how the RMSA has emerged as a key regionally led maritime security provider. It examines the RMSA’s origins, governance structures, partnerships, and future ambitions, while also tracing how the architecture has evolved since an earlier edition published in 2019.
The brief is the signature output of a 2024–2025 knowledge exchange project funded through Research England’s Policy Support Fund allocation to the University of Oxford via the Oxford Policy Engagement Network (OPEN)’s Public Policy Challenge Fund. The project examined the relationship between regionally owned maritime security institutions and their regional and international partners.
Drawing on the authors’ engagement with stakeholders across multiple scales and locations, the publication is described as a form of “academic-policy co-production”, bridging academic research and real-world policy challenges.
Professor Sullivan de Estrada said:
“The RMSA is now well-established as a regionally designed, owned and led maritime security provider; an institutional foundation for a coordinated, African-led maritime security capability; and a contributor to the larger regional and global response to maritime security challenges.”
The full policy brief is available via the Indian Ocean Commission website.
