GUEST BLOG - Dr Marika McAdam

On 25 – 29 August 2025, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Regional Office on Southeast Asia and the Pacific (UNODC ROSEAP) facilitated a workshop on responding to the smuggling of migrants by sea in partnership with Australian Border Force, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and with the support of the people of Japan. Throughout the workshop, officials from maritime agencies across Vanuatu and beyond, worked in multi-agency syndicate groups on a complex simulation exercise.  

At the helm of this five-day, interactive workshop, Dr Rebecca Miller, UNODC’s Regional Coordinator of Human Trafficking & Migrant Smuggling for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, explained the challenges of responding to complex transnational organized crimes, in which criminals commodify human lives. 

She explained that UNODC is the guardian of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (UNTOC) and its supplementary Protocol on Smuggling of Migrants, and that “adherence to the norms and standards of international human rights law, is a critical component of efforts by States to respond to transnational organized crime – including at sea.”

In setting out the international legal landscape for confronting migrant smuggling situations at sea, UNODC consultant and friend of Human Rights at Sea, Dr Marika McAdam, explained that the international legislative framework concerned with transnational organized crime, must be interpreted and applied in accordance with existing obligations of States, including those set out international maritime law and international human rights law. In this context, she referred to the Geneva Declaration of Human Rights at Sea (GDHRAS) as a useful tool for State authorities to better understand their obligations to people at sea. 

Dr McAdam commended the utility of the Geneva Declaration of Human Rights Law, which does not create or call for any new obligations, but rather navigates through a complicated legislative landscape to clarify the obligations that port, coastal and flag States have to the millions of people who live, work and travel at sea. 

“The international legal framework that brings together transnational organized crime law, law of the sea and human rights law can be challenging to apply in practice” she said, “but in determining what actions should be taken and how, it is critical for States to understand that human rights apply at sea as they do on land.”

ENDS.

Source: Human Rights at Sea 2025

Certified Original. AI was not used in the drafting of this article.

Photo: Dr Marika McAdam.

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