seethrough

when i was a pre-teen Pirates stories were the rage.  I still remember watching “The Princess Bride” for the first time.  All that sailing ships into misty fog…

One Monday - it was my day off - I wandered into Pirates of the Carribean and Capt. Jack Sparrow brought it all back.  Seems pirates are back!  (don’t bother with the sequels - just stick to the original Jack Sparrow movie: The curse of the Black Pearl.  or, find a copy of The Princes Bride and catch up on lost time…)

But there’s a new pirates story that is emerging on the west coast of Africa…

Have you asked yourself why are somalian pirates risking their lives taking hostages from ships passing the horn of africa?  Well, yesterday I discovered some stats that begin to answer the question.

Try compating the mortality rate of children under the age of 5 - in Somali, my home country South Africa and for comparitive sake, the United States:

Comparative mortality of under 5’s (per 1000):

Somalia - 143
South Africa - 59
USA - 8

Next, consider the  comaparative income of the average population GNI per capita (Gross National Income divided by the number of citizens in each country):

Comparative GNI per capita (2007):

Somalia - US$ 140
South Africa - US$ 5760
USA - US$ 46040

(Check the graph on the right to get the full effect of these numbers.)

stats courtesy of UNICEF (studies conducted in 2007)

Another  factor is presented in this articel from thefreelibrary.com:

The reasons behind piracy: piracy off the Somali coast has been headline news, but the media have neglected to say why the pirates do what they do. Massip Farid Ikken reports.

Of course, I could just be soft…  we can always send in the big guns…  Check out the alternative solutions as presetned by Grant Walliser on his High Voltage blog.

I have decided to join the “Thursdays in Black” campaign.  It started many years ago in South America and has spread around the world.  I was introduced to it by a colleague who works with Diakonia Council of Churches - www.diakonia.org.za.  The campagin invites people to wear black on Thursdays “towards a world without rape and violence” - especially violence against women.  Since discovering that one in four south african men (in my province) confessed to having raped a women (read my reflection here) I have been keen to explore ways to both heighten awareness and reduce the threat that our society is to women and children.

Will you join me?

You can read about the history of this movement here and here and here.  You can also read the executive summary of the research conducted by the Medical Research Council here.