ReCAAP

ReCAAP, the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia, is the information-sharing framework for Asian waters. It was adopted at Tokyo on 11 November 2004 and entered into force on 4 September 2006, and its Information Sharing Centre was established in Singapore on 29 November 2006. It arose from a Japanese initiative rather than from the Malacca littoral states: Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi proposed regional action at the ASEAN plus Japan Summit in Manila in November 1999, the Regional Conference on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships met in Tokyo from 27 to 28 April 2000, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed the legal framework itself at the ASEAN plus Three Summit in November 2001.

It has 22 Contracting Parties as at 1 August 2026, when the Hellenic Republic acceded. Indonesia and Malaysia are not among them, so two of the three Malacca littoral states stand outside the agreement most often credited with the strait’s improvement. Its annual reports are one of three registers that count incidents in the region, alongside the International Maritime Bureau and IMO, and the three produce different totals because they draw different geographic boundaries and use different reporting channels.

The full article will cover the Agreement’s structure and obligations, the Centre’s reporting products and incident classification, the membership question, and how its figures should be read against the other registers.