The ocean covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface and is essential to all life on the planet. Since ancient times it has played a vital role for humankind as fishing grounds that sustain nutrition, a means of transportation, trade routes, tourist resources, and a source of marine energy.

Today, however, the ocean can be said to be the world’s largest lawless zone. Because the rule of law is not sufficiently enforced, a variety of problems arise. Crimes at sea include those that threaten resources and the environment, such as overfishing, illegal fishing, dumping of toxic waste, and smuggling, as well as crimes that threaten human rights, including migrant smuggling, forced labor, slavery, human trafficking, murder, and piracy. This article focuses on those crimes that threaten human rights.

A vessel at sea (Photo: Alex Berger / Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0])

The relationship between the sea and people

First, we look at various data showing the close relationship between the sea and humanity, divided into fisheries, trade, and tourism. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 1 billion people worldwide eat fish and fish products as their primary source of protein. The number of people engaged in the primary fisheries and aquaculture sectors, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), was estimated at 58.5 million in 2020.

The size of the fisheries market continues to grow and is projected to increase from about 1 trillion U.S. dollars to about 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars between 2023 and 2028. Fisheries in these data include those in rivers and lakes as well as the sea. At sea, most fishing takes place within territorial waters near the coast (※1), and 85% of fishing on the high seas (※2) away from the coast is dominated by China, Spain, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

The sea is also extremely important as a trade route, with 80% of world trade carried by sea. Global seaborne trade volume has increased year by year and more than doubled between 1990 and 2021. The volume of global seaborne trade in 2021 is estimated at 11 billion tons.

In addition, the sea is used as a tourism resource, and the market is growing. According to Grand View Research, the global coastal and maritime tourism market size was estimated at 2.9 trillion U.S. dollars in 2021 and is expected to expand further from 2022 to 2030.

As seen above, many people around the world are connected to the sea, and many workers are employed at sea. On the other hand, precisely because so many people work there, many accidents and incidents also occur at sea. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people die each year as a result of engagement in fishing. This figure covers the entire fisheries sector and does not necessarily mean deaths at sea; in addition to accidents and illness, human rights abuses are not uncommon causes of death. Nor are fishers the only ones who die at sea. There are also many cases in which boats carrying migrants and refugees attempting dangerous voyages sink in transit and people perish. For example, the number of migrants and refugees who died or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2021 while trying to reach Europe from Africa or the Middle East exceeded 3,000.

Below, we examine human rights abuses at sea in three areas: human trafficking and migrant smuggling, forced labor and slavery, and piracy.

People working on a boat (Photo: ILO Asia-Pacific / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])

Human trafficking and migrant smuggling

Human trafficking is defined in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons under the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime as placing a person under control, transporting, transferring, harboring, or receiving a person for the purpose of exploitation, through threats or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, or deception. In addition to threats of violence, intermediaries often use methods such as recruitment agencies and fraud involving educational or employment opportunities to lure victims. This crime occurs in every region of the world, and the seas are no exception.

The form of human trafficking frequently seen in fisheries involves trading migrant workers or fishers for the purpose of forced labor. Intermediaries hire individuals by misrepresenting employment conditions and then compel them to work in poor environments—a pattern seen repeatedly. We look more closely at forced labor at sea in the next section.

In addition to human trafficking, migrant smuggling is also one of the major problems. Migrant smuggling refers to facilitating a migrant’s illegal entry into a destination country for financial or other material gain. Migrants seek to move to other countries to escape persecution, conflict, poverty, and natural disasters, and smugglers exploit that situation as an opportunity that entails relatively low risks of detection or arrest while generating profits. Because migrants lack legal avenues, smugglers sometimes provide services at high cost, including transportation and the forgery of identity documents.

Because these services are illegal, migrants—fearful of seeking help from authorities—are in a weak position and often subjected to harsh conditions, including abuse, rape, and theft during voyages. According to survivors’ testimonies, the bodies of those who died under such circumstances were sometimes thrown into the sea.

Smuggling routes include land, air, and sea. The main maritime routes include the route across the Mediterranean from North Africa and the Middle East toward Europe; the route from Southeast and South Asia toward Australia; routes from South Asia toward the Gulf states; and routes from the Horn of Africa (※3) toward South Africa or the Gulf states. According to a report by the European Migrant Smuggling Centre (EMSC), strengthened border controls and travel restrictions in the European Union (EU) are driving a shift in smuggling from land and air routes to sea routes.

Migrants being returned (Photo: Coast Guard News / Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0])

Forced labor and slavery

The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines forced labor in the 1930 “Forced Labour Convention” (No. 29) as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.” Forced labor also occurs at sea, where shipowners exploit crew by, for example, not paying sufficient wages. Workers may be brought onto vessels—the sites of forced labor—through human trafficking methods or take jobs without knowing forced labor is occurring, only to be made to work in unsanitary, dangerous, and harsh conditions. Working hours far exceed statutory limits, and it can be difficult even to take days off or breaks.

Because it is difficult for authorities to monitor vessels while at sea, there had been little data on forced labor, but a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in 2020 found that of 16,000 industrial fishing vessels analyzed, 14–26% may be using forced labor. It suggests that as many as 57,000 to 100,000 people working on these vessels may be at risk of forced labor.

Beyond forced labor lies slavery, where crew are subjected to even more appalling conditions. One report describes a case in which workers were fed only a bowl of rice a day and forced to work 20 hours a day report. A 2014 Guardian investigation into slave ships off Thailand reported that on some vessels, in addition to beatings and other violence, there were cases of torture, administering methamphetamines to keep crew working for long periods, and even murder. There were also reports of slaves being executed in front of their shipmates.

Victims of forced labor and slavery are often people living in poverty seeking jobs, undocumented migrants, and refugees. Those seeking work to escape poverty are deceived by recruitment agencies promising good conditions and frequently fall victim to forced labor or slavery. When victims are undocumented migrants, a major problem is that fear of arrest or deportation prevents them from seeking help from the police even when abused. As an example involving refugees, Rohingya refugees from Myanmar (※4) have ended up enslaved at sea. They often flee Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh, Thailand, and Indonesia, but in Thailand there have been cases in which intermediaries sold them onto fishing boats engaged in slave labor for exploitation. In all such cases, socially marginalized people—impoverished youth, undocumented migrants, and refugees—are more likely to be victimized.

Piracy

Pirates today continue to threaten vessels at sea in many regions. Although incidents of piracy have gradually declined, reports persist.

Piracy increased rapidly off Somalia and nearby waters around 2000. One background factor was the collapse of the Somali government in 1991, which rendered coastal security ineffective. With lower levels of security, authorities could no longer suppress piracy or prevent the illegal incursion of foreign fishing vessels. In response to those incursions, some local fishers also turned to piracy.

However, around 2012 piracy declined dramatically (※5). Contributing factors include Kenya’s invasion of Somalia (※6), the activities of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) (※7), an increase in privately contracted armed security personnel aboard commercial vessels, a reduction in investment from Somali domestic backers who had been financing piracy as a business, and the expansion of the Puntland Maritime Police Force (PMPF) (※8). Many countries even deployed their navies to protect the trade route linking Asia and Europe from pirates. Also, together with private armed guards, and with the aim of avoiding restrictions on transporting weapons, floating armouries (※9) were introduced. Because the waters off Somalia are high seas, it was possible to bring weapons aboard—something restricted in many countries’ territorial waters—but it is difficult to use floating armouries for counter-piracy measures within territorial seas, discussed below.

The piracy problem has not been confined to the waters off Somalia; it has also occurred within the territorial seas of various countries. Over the five years from 2018 to 2022, areas with many reported incidents include the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, the Singapore Strait, and the west coast of South America.

In the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, piracy surged around 2008, threatening regional security, but the number of incidents has gradually declined since 2020. Pirates often target bulk carriers and oil tankers, but small commercial vessels are also attacked. The majority of incidents occur in Nigerian territorial waters, and one motive for piracy is retaliation against exploitation by foreign companies. The background here is oil extraction in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Amid widespread poverty in the region, Western oil companies have reaped vast wealth while causing environmental destruction such as pollution, and this situation is seen as fueling piracy.

The Singapore Strait, meanwhile, is an extremely important strait through which 50% of world trade volume passes, but incidents of armed robbery against vessels are increasing. Pirates target cargo transported through the strait, and in most incidents large vessels such as bulk carriers and oil tankers are attacked.

Off Peru as well, many incidents of armed robbery by pirates are reported. Incidents off Peru differ in nature from those in the Singapore Strait, with smaller vessels often targeted. Crew members are robbed of radios, computers, and personal belongings.

Why human rights abuses are frequent at sea

Why are human rights abuses so frequent at sea? One basic reason is that the vastness of the ocean makes it difficult to monitor and police criminal activity at sea. Another is that no country has jurisdiction over the high seas. Instead, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) stipulates that, in principle, crimes on the high seas are governed by the domestic law of the flag state of the vessel on which the crime occurred. In other words, a situation is permitted in which a country can exercise its own laws in international waters.

Exacerbating the problem is the existence of flags of convenience. A flag of convenience refers to a vessel being registered in a foreign country for convenience. Shipowners move their registry to flag-of-convenience states such as Panama and Liberia for advantages such as tax regimes and weaker protections for crew rights. Looking at the top 3 shipowning countries in 2022, 86% of Greece’s fleet, 85% of Japan’s, and 59% of China’s are registered in other countries registered. Because the law of the flag state applies on the high seas, the laws that govern these ships are those of the flag-of-convenience state, not those of the country where the actual owner is based. If a flag-of-convenience state is chosen where labor laws impose few regulations and enforcement capacity is minimal, there is a heightened risk of widespread human rights abuses.

Thai fishing boat (Photo: SeaDave / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY 2.0])

Another factor that makes it difficult to monitor vessels at sea is transshipment. Transshipment refers to transferring catches or fuel between fishing vessels and carrier vessels for transport, and it is an indispensable process for distant-water fisheries. However, unlike transshipment in or near ports, transshipment on the high seas is difficult to monitor and easily obscures vessel activity at sea. Reduced port calls make it harder for victims of forced labor and slavery to escape from vessels. It also contributes to problems such as the easier movement of illegal cargo, including people and drugs. More than 10,000 instances of transshipment were identified between 2015 and 2020. Not all transshipment is problematic, but the greater the number, the higher the risk of facilitating illegal activities.

Outlook

We have examined a range of human rights abuses—human trafficking, migrant smuggling, forced labor, slavery, and piracy. We have highlighted the difficulty of monitoring vessels at sea as an underlying problem, but advances in various technologies are gradually making monitoring easier.

An example of combining technologies to monitor vessels is the system developed by Global Fishing Watch (Global Fishing Watch: GFW), an organization created in 2016 through a partnership between Google and environmental nonprofits to monitor the oceans. GFW uses Automatic Identification System (AIS) data and satellites to create and publish a near real-time map tracking the movements of about 60,000 commercial fishing vessels. Of approximately 2.9 million vessels worldwide, only 2% are equipped with AIS as of 2023, but the number of AIS-equipped fishing vessels is increasing by about 10% to 30% each year.

Perhaps the most familiar technology is the crew’s smartphone. When encountering human rights abuses, crew members can use smartphones to record evidence such as videos or audio, even where there is no signal. In 2014 in Fiji, a previously unreported murder at sea came to light thanks to a smartphone that was found by chance as lost property case (※10).

The Singapore Strait from the air (Photo: Bjoertvedt / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 4.0])

Such technologies may expose some human rights abuses that previously went undetected and untraceable. On the other hand, there are issues that technology alone cannot address, such as poverty and migration/refugee problems—the root causes of forced labor, slavery, and migrant smuggling. Governments need to strengthen coast guard capabilities; monitor and regulate their own industries; improve legal frameworks; and address the spread of flags of convenience. However, no matter how many vessel-related measures are introduced, as long as resource extraction continues worldwide and stark inequalities persist between high- and low-income countries, eradication of the problem will be difficult.

※1 Territorial waters: The sea area up to 12 nautical miles from the baseline. The scope over which a coastal state exercises sovereignty.

※2 High seas: Ocean areas not included in any country’s territorial sea or exclusive economic zone. Open to all states.

※3 The name for the eastern part of the African continent, comprising Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Eritrea, and Djibouti.

※4 A Muslim minority persecuted in Myanmar.

※5 The decline in piracy off Somalia has also given rise to new problems. Somalia has become a hub for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing; as attacks by Somali pirates have steadily declined since 2012, foreign fishing fleets have gradually returned to Somali waters. Many of the foreign fleets engaging in IUU fishing come from Iran, Yemen, and Southeast Asia, and are said to have support from a corrupt Somali state.

※6 Kenya’s 2011 invasion of southern Somalia. Under the pretext of defending itself from Somali armed groups, Kenya intervened militarily in southern Somalia and occupied parts of the region.

※7 A regional peacekeeping operation run by the African Union. Composed of forces from Uganda, Burundi, and others, it operated to restore stability in Somalia.

※8 A maritime police force aiming to eradicate crimes such as piracy and illegal fishing off Somalia and to protect marine resources. Puntland is a region in northeastern Somalia that declared autonomy in 1998.

※9 Armory ships that carry weapons, ammunition, and maritime security personnel. Operated mainly by private maritime security companies (PMSC). Floating armouries move within the high seas and help protect merchant ships transiting areas with high numbers of pirate attacks.

※10 A smartphone left in a taxi contained a video recording of a murder at sea, revealing an unreported homicide. Although dozens of crew were visible in the footage, the incident had not been reported to Fijian authorities. Without the lost smartphone, it is highly likely the case would never have come to light.

Writer: MIKI Yuna

Graphics: Virgil Hawkins

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