The government of The Philippines has issued a new rule that Filipino commercial sailors are no longer allowed to deploy on commercial ships that sail through the area off the Horn of Africa because of the threat of pirates. (Today, over 100 Filipino sailors are being held for ransom by African pirates.)First, there are two points that need to be understood:
Point 1: There are more Filipinos on commercial vessels worldwide than any other nationality.
Point 2: Huge quantities of ships sail past the Horn of Africa.
Combine those points together, and what you have is "huge quantities of ships sailing past the Horn of Africa are being manned by Filipinos." What this ban would mean is throwing the worldwide shipping system into disarray as huge portions of Filipinos are relocated to "safer" routes, and replacement crews are found to traverse the Gulf of Aden. (The number of Filipino sailors who would find themselves out of work is not known, but it is probably greater than "just a few".)
My new landlord is one of the 350,000 Filipino sailors working the world's oceans on commercial ships, and he says that he gets paid a very nice bonus for sailing past the Horn of Africa. I'm guessing that he, like 349,999 of his compatriots, will be ignoring this rule from the government of The Philippines. Let's hope that the shipping companies do the same.
I'm sure this ban on sailing past the Horn of Africa was made with good intentions... but the repurcussions of such a ban are so enormous, deep, and wide, that it simply has to be ignored by default.
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