Attending the IMO for Protecting Seafarers Against Criminalisation

HRAS International attended the one day conference at the London IMO headquarters addressing the issue: 'Protecting seafarers against criminalization: what more can be done?'

Today, Member State representatives, international organisations and accredited NGO representatives attended the event organized by IMO and ILO in collaboration with the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF).

This was set against the updated Guidelines on Fair Treatment of Seafarers detained in connection with alleged crimes which have been issued and are now publicly available.

Across several sessions, including attendees listening to in-person seafarers' lived experience alongside discussions and insights from ports, shipowners and supply chain perspectives, including the role of the insurers and judiciary in the cases of potential seafarer criminalisation; the event explored the challenges ahead with the numbers of detained crew increasing.

The question of what more can be done to assist seafarers brought about numerous suggestions, all with an apparent common thread for the need for action.

The discussions also highlighted several points, including:

The difficulty in the mandatory adoption of the Guidelines verses voluntary adoption.
The need for technical cooperation and implementation by Member States requiring increased familiarisation with the Guidelines.
The need to enforce the message to governments as part of education, promotion and implementation of the Guidelines.
The need for targeted capacity building across the entire maritime supply chain.
The use of preventative action to ensure the Guidelines are implemented so there are no gaps where entities can not claim non-implementation.
Better handling of cases and the broadening of direct engagement with a collaborative approach across all responsible actors.

Comment

HRASI Executive Director commented: "After a decade, I am delighted to see human rights terminology increasingly embedded in the industry narrative and especially, the Guidelines. That said, despite the increasing onus on talking about upholding human rights protections and de facto seafarers rights; with the current extreme levels of state-level led impunity being exercised around the globe, including direct abuse of people’s fundamental rights both on land and at sea as we speak - means that we still have much to do to assure rights' enforcement."

ENDS.

Source: Human Rights at Sea and Human Rights at Sea International

Photo: HRAS International

Contact: If you have any questions, please write to us at enquiries@hrasi.org.
About Sharing. We welcome the use and dissemination of our copyrighted work with full, accurate and proper accreditation. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.