Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said Wednesday he will ask the Japanese government to
help provide vocational education for young men at risk of falling into a life of piracy.
"We want the amount of funds that Japan was putting into service delivery like education to be refocused on providing vocational education centers for those young boys so that they become useful members of society," Mohamud said at the Japan Press Club prior to consultations with Tokyo this week.
Piracy in the Gulf of Aden peaked around 2012 and is now "drastically declining," he said, thanks to pressure from international naval and coast guard forces that have patrolled the region, as well as Somali efforts to mobilize community leaders against the crime.
"This joint effort has succeeded to make the piracy phenomena almost zero," he said.
Nevertheless, Mohamud said, "the root cause for the piracy is still there."
Young men who missed out on educational opportunities due to the civil war that raged across the country in the 1990s are "not employable...so, these boys are the bulk of the pirates and they are also the bulk of the fighting force in al-Shabab," he said, referring to the Somalia-based terrorist organization.
How to best provide these boys with an alternative to violence is "one of the areas that we are going to discuss with the Japanese government," the Somali president said, adding that he also planned to talk about bilateral cooperation in other areas.
Mohamud arrived in Japan on Tuesday for a four-day visit, during which he will meet with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Source: Kyodo News International