After twenty five years of United Nations involvement, Somalia is still a country in total chaos. According to the UN, Somalia is poor and literally starving. Acute malnutrition rates are high and forty five percent of the population currently lives on less than $1 a day.

For many years, Somalia has been ripped apart by violence and lawlessness. Since 2007, more than ten thousand people have been killed and millions have fled their homes in terror. In recent months, murdered aid workers and a thirteen year old girl stoned to death for adultery have been reported in international news stories.

Still, Somalia pirates are benefiting quite nicely from all of this lawlessness and desperation in the country. These former fishermen patrol thousands of square miles of water from the Gulf of Aden to the Kenyan border along the Indian Ocean.

The pirates use small boats to pull alongside ships and board with ladders or sometimes even rusty grappling hooks. Once on deck, they hold the crew at gunpoint but treat all detained hostages very well until a bounty is paid, usually in the amount of several million dollars.

The pirates of Somalia have attacked more than 75 vessels already this year, and their profit in this poor African country will reach more than $50 million in 2008. Since international governments are eager to make any hostage problem quickly go away, piracy in Somalia has become a very lucrative business. As a result, Somali pirates live like kings and are big customers in the country's drug trade.

Meanwhile, when NATO warships, the U.S. 5th Fleet, and ships from Russia and India have been successful in overtaking pirate vessels, they’re not sure what to do with the captured pirates. So far, no country has been willing to imprison the pirates, who are often simply set free to return to their boats after their weapons are seized.

Last June, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution empowering states to send warships into Somalia's territorial waters with the government's consent to combat piracy and armed robbery at sea. The problem with the U.N. Resolution was that there has been no real central government in Somalia since 1991.

So, the problem of piracy off the coast of Somalia has steadily become much worse. Recently, the Somali pirates have become so concerned about their image and international public relations that they have hired a spokesman to handle all global media inquiries.

A statement in the last few days from the pirates’ new spokesman even has an environmental message. The pirates are currently holding the MV Faina, a Ukrainian ship carrying tanks and military hardware, off Somalia's northern coast. The pirates have accused European firms of dumping toxic waste off the Somali coast and are demanding an $8m ransom for the return of the Ukrainian ship they captured, saying the money will go towards cleaning up the toxic waste.

For years, there have been allegations that European and Asian companies are dumping toxic waste, including nuclear waste, off the Somali coastline. In fact, evidence of such practices appeared on the beaches of northern Somalia when the tsunami of 2004 hit the country.

In fact, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reported the tsunami washed up rusting containers of toxic waste on the shores of Puntland. A UNEP spokesman confirmed that "Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there."

The United Nations currently remains silent on the pirates environmental concerns. Even after twenty five years, the problems of starvation and lawlessness in the country will have to continue to be a U.N. focus. Meanwhile, the issues of piracy and the dumping of toxic waste off the coast of Somalia will not be the subject of any real conclusive international review.

Indeed, the sad truth is that the problems in Somalia may well be worse than any other country in the world today.