In Rome, on 10 March 1988, the International Conference on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation adopts the Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Fixed Platforms Located on the Continental Shelf (SUA PROT). The Protocol supplements the SUA Convention on the safety of maritime navigation, signed the same day; the depositary is the Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The authentic languages are Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

States agree to prohibit and punish conduct that may threaten offshore fixed platforms, including oil platforms: seizing control by force or threat; violence against a person on a platform if likely to endanger its safety; destroying or damaging a platform so as to endanger safety; placing a device or substance likely to destroy or damage it; injuring or killing anyone in connection with those acts; attempts, complicity and compelling another through threats.

The Protocol sets out aut dedere aut judicare: a party must either prosecute the offender or extradite the person to a state that requests prosecution for the same crime. Formally it could not enter into force before the SUA Convention; both entered into force on 1 March 1992 once the Protocol’s condition (three ratifications) was met.

The instrument draws on the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft and extends maritime counter-terrorism logic to fixed installations on the continental shelf. By 2018 more than 150 states were parties.

In London on 14 October 2005 a further Protocol to SUA PROT was concluded, criminalising use of platforms for biological, chemical or nuclear weapons and discharge of hazardous substances; that 2005 Protocol entered into force on 28 July 2010.

The Rome Protocol of 10 March 1988 remains the core multilateral framework criminalising attacks on fixed platforms on the continental shelf.

Image: oil platform; Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Fixed Platforms. Treaty text: Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Fixed Platforms (Rome, 10 March 1988).