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Somalian Piracy
In March 2011, Save Our Seafarers (SOS)was formed. It is an informal grouping of five international maritime organisations (Bimco, Intercargo, INTERTANKO, ITF, The International Chamber of Shipping) launched the Saveourseafarers (SOS) not-for-profit worldwide movement to: • Raise public awareness of the human and economic costs of piracy in the Indian Ocean • Press the governments of maritime nations to provide a practical legal framework within which to arrest, prosecute, convict and punish individuals suspected of piracy • Encourage the governments of maritime nations that provide naval anti-piracy support to enforce international law On their website they list Maersk Tankers as a corporate sponsor. SOS claims to speak for both the international shipping industry and the 1.25m seafarers in the global workforce and hopes to pressure governments to contribute resources towards thwarting piracy. The initiative is funded by voluntary contributions from the founding organizations. Since the campaign's inception in March 2012, the total number of maritime associations, trade unions, mutual P&I insurers, seafarers' charities, and other maritime bodies supporting it increased from 5 to 33. Many of the member organizations are opposed to the use of lethal force in anti-piracy operations, and reportedly none of the contributors is active in the private maritime security sector.Chamber of Shipping of B.C. and Fairmont Shipping (Canada) Ltd. joined the organization in an effort to put pressure on the Canadian government and to raise awareness with the Canadian public about this issue and its human and economic costs. [1]

SOS offers a variety of tools to raise awareness about piracy. Their Live Piracy Map charts piracy incidents worldwide. The news feed chronicles current events and their “cost of piracy” section details human and economic costs. Their YouTube channel features a video about the impact of piracy. Its statistics are frequently quoted in various news outlets such as CNN. According to the United Nations Security Council over $150 million dollars of ransom payments were paid to pirates in 2011. [2] On March 20, 2012 Alastair Evitt, Managing Director of Meridian Marine Management and current Chairperson of SOS spoke in opposition of governments who want to ban ransom payments to pirates claiming that ship companies would not be able to use high-risk sea-lanes without this method of ending conflict. An article in Foreign Policy estimated that it costs 80% more to route a ship through the Gulf of Aden due to increased insurance rates, but that the alternative is to add three weeks to a shipping route.

Oceans Beyond Piracy Oceans Beyond Piracy also brings together a variety of stakeholders to try to educate the public about the piracy issue. They are a part of The One Earth Future Foundation.