'Governments must deal with an issue that is not just a shipping problem but a global socio-economic evil of growing proportions'

摘要

Events over the past few weeks have once again centred on the troubled waters of the Horn of Africa (HoA)/Gulf of Aden (GoA) as piracy gangs from Somalia have overwhelmed several more ships and taken more crew hostage. At the time of writing, an estimated 16 ships and close to 300 seafarers were being held captive. It was the incident surrounding the l,100TEU-capacity Maersk Alabama that has sparked off the latest debate and yet again stressed the need for concerted international action in dealing with the pirates.