Somali pirates cost global economy billions: the cost to the global economy of the activities of pirates operating off the Somali coast is estimated to be, directly around $12bn and, indirectly, scores of billion dollars more. The pirates have demonstrated how a few people armed with guns can cause a worldwide crisis. What can be done to stop this scourge of the seas? Richard Seymour discusses.

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Somali pirates cost global economy billions: the cost to the global economy of the activities of pirates operating off the Somali coast is estimated to be, directly around $12bn and, indirectly, scores of billion dollars more. The pirates have demonstrated how a few people armed with guns can cause a worldwide crisis. What can be done to stop this scourge of the seas? Richard Seymour discusses.

In 1991, the government in Somalia fell. In the intervening 20 years the country has lurched from crisis to crisis as civil war and political uncertainty took its toll. According to the UN, approximately 75% of all Somalis live in extreme poverty, and it is not likely to be a coincidence that the same two decades saw a rise in piracy off its coast--for desperate times cal...

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