Talking about piracy is reminded me the movie named “Pirates of the Caribbean”. Those pirates in the movie were humorous as well as violent. Their images did not lead me to fear except of the villains. However, there are real pirates existing according to BBC News “Pirates seized record 1,181 hostages in 2010 – report”. It caught my eyes with surprising feeling at once when I found this news on the ranking of popular read news on the homepage of the BBC News. I felt curious to know what the news is about and whether the pirates are existent, as well as would like to share this article to you all.
In the news, pirates took a record 1,181 hostages in 2010 according to a report by Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB). The IMB described that the figure is the highest since the center began monitoring in 1991. In addition to the report, 49 of 53 ships were hijacked off Somalia’s coast and 1,016 hostages, 86%, were seized by the Somali pirates. Although increasing marine patrolling was one of the measures that seemed to result effectively, but the Somali pirates worked beyond offshore instead. The significant problem is a lack of responsible authority in Somalia because of no functioning government since 1991. Moreover, there was another study which found naval piracy costs the global economy between $7 billion and $12 billion each year. It can infer that the majority of costs were from piracy off Somalia.
Somalia is one of the high-risk countries in the world of Banking, as from my work experience. The banned activities relating to Somalia are involved money laundering and terrorism such as trading munitions and natural resources, and human trafficking, which resulted in prohibiting every kind of financial transactions to proceed through financial institutions. These activities were justified the effects to humans and then were decided to be banned by international organizations such as FATF and United Nations, for example. However, I have not known that there is more vital offence conducted by Somali that caused overall loss of huge amount nowadays. I think this kind of offence is very persuasive for offenders to think big as high risk, high return. Since seas are out of sight and in wide-ranging areas, people can commit any crime, especially piracy of cargo ships. Even if there are increasing in maritime watchdogs, pirates can also find other areas without those patrolmen. It is not easy to rob, but not difficult to escape too. I think it is a big problem affecting many countries because goods transportation by ships is very popular. Various kinds of products can be loaded with more weight than by air freight. That is a reason why piracy can cost a huge loss to the worldwide economy. In my opinion, the best way to solve the issue is the cooperation from international in order to gather and brainstorm for any possible solutions that can lead to reduce overall damage. If there are collaboration from many countries, there will be more strong effective solutions; for example, sending navies to protect any piracy occurring nearby areas.
In case of Somalia, the country has been involved in money laundering for long period of time. I would suggest that piracies should be included in the list of banned activities in Somalia so that any relevant money can not be deposited, as well as illegal objects can not be transferred to legal money. In addition, since there is no practical government working, there is no responsible authority to control the situation. The Somali should be more concerned so that their nation’s image can be cleaner.
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Hello Preaw!! Thank for choosing this interesting news to share us. Personally, i believe that our classmate have heard about this scandal in Somaria. For me,I have been following about the situation of the pirate offence in Somalia gulf since i watched this news from the television that our government have been commanded the number of marines to reinforce the international troop in order to suppress the offshore robbery in Somaria.Once i heard about this news,i was in doubt about the reason why Thailand's goverment have to send marines to improve the situation in Somalia.
ReplyDelete(Before this situation happened, i had never heard Thailand have a diplomacy with this developing country.Hence,in this comment i would like to share my criticise about this situation)
Firstly, regarding the aspect of the diplomacy, i focused to be sceptical on the relationship between Thailand and Somaria. But relationship between those countries might not be existed as the main reason for deciding this reinforcement, which Thailand's government have to spend their national budget on operating this reinforcing mission. Assuming that I think Somaria does not seem to be one of the countries that Thailand's assistance on those countries can benefit Thailand in the future (According to political economic, the theory of exchanging benefit is fundamentally regarded as the principle of international relation. This theory lead me to analysize this situation as primarily critical on this occasion.) So,i think this is the main reason why our relationship are not so close as same as that between Thailand and USA or other thriving countries. With this aspect, if Thailand have not been concerned Somaria as one of their close alliances, what the main reason is for supporting the government to help Somaria in this problem.(PS. In that time, i did not know that Somaria is one of the national members of UN)
However, i confess that in that time i overlooked about their interrelating in economic fields in which later i have found it as the most considerable reason for helping Somalia to suppressing those pirates.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the ship routh that travelling between Asia and Europe, it is the fact that almost every cargo ship which have a routh to commute between these two continentals need to travel through Somaria sea border. The significance of Somaria sea border becomes as one of the most crucial consideration on this decision. Indeed,ship transportation is the most popular way to transport a large number of various merchandises from one country to others aroung the world. This kind of transportation has been known that it lead international trade to be more prosperous and being substantial improvement. Therefore, when this robbery interrupt this transportation, it leads the price of transportation to increase. This increase subsequently affects to the price of product. Inevitably, the increasing price of product is not good for the growth of the national economic.
This adverse effect from this curcumstance should be concerned as the main reason why each nations are stimulated to tackle this problem rapidly and seriously. Therefore,when i understand the content of this situation and how important other countries have to assist Somaria to tackle this huge problem, i agree with this government's decision to be enthusiastic about this assistence.
Nevertheless, some can think different from my reason because there are many approachs in this world that can explain about this international reinforcement.SO, i would like to know about other opinion on this situation?
What i comment here, i think that it has many interesting arguments in Preaw responding. But, i cannot discuss each arguments. So, i choose to talk and focus on the international reinforcement in this situation because it can broaden our horizon on criticizing the stage of international relation ...... Thank for giving me an opportunity to raise the discussion here. :>
However, some have been argued that the Thai government also realize about showing the power of Thailand's military to the world. But i partly disagree with this distinctive argument because what the supporting reason is for this argument. Personally, i believe that Thailand does not need to show their military power in this period of times.
Another would say that this reinforcement which operating the mission with the UN international troops will good outcome to our country in long terms.
I am sorry that i have to seperate my overall comments to two comments because google do not allow people to write in a post more than the limited amount of word.I have already tried to post comments together, but it cannot. So, sorry na kub
ReplyDeleteWow !! Winny, that's a little bit surprise from your response showing that you are interested in the news relating to Somalia also.
ReplyDeleteAs you mentioned about international relation between Thailand and Somalia, I agree that Thailand are not closely related to Somalia in any ways. Despite this fact, Thai government still needs to send navies to assist United Nation in suppressing operation together with other countries also, in order to protect the goods. Additionally, I think the purpose of our assistance in the operation is to present our cooperation to United Nation, to show that we are complied with the other nations or can be implied that we are on the same side as members of UN. Hence, sending army to help in this operation does not show the power of Thai military but to show an agreement with other nations.