An Introduction to Human Rights at Sea

 David Heyman, the head and founder of Human Rights at sea, a fantastic organisation dedicated to, as you can understand, human rights at sea.

David is going to explain that much further and in great detail.

But before we start, I'd like to say a few words of introduction.

As you may know, I am Professor Leila Choukroune and I'm Director of the Democratic Citizenship Theme at the University of Portsmouth and Professor of International Law.

So without further ado, we're going to give the floor to David.

But remember that the meeting is recorded, is going to be available on our website research futures so kindly switch off your cameras and kindly switch off your mics.

David again, without further ado, the floor is yours.

Would you mind introducing yourself first and saying how and why you've created this organisation? Well, firstly, thank you to the University of Portsmouth, the opportunity to speak and if there's some technological issues, we'll just fight through those.

As we used to say.

David Hammond, I'm the founder and CEO of Human Rights to Sea.

We established the organisation as an idea in 2013 and we have really been and I would go on to detail that in a few slides as we go ahead in more detail rather.

But we're really focussing on bringing human rights protections and abuses and addressing abuses at sea right to the public forefront.

I previously have had a career in the military.

I have been working within the academia area, but also as counsel.

So I have been also an operator but also a lawyer as well, though I'm non-practicing at the moment.

Fantastic.

And as a lawyer, where are you covering already human rights at sea or the globe to see what was your main specialism? No, I wasn't.

I was actually a criminal barrister working mainly as an employed lawyer within the British Royal Navy.

So a lot of defence prosecution and advisory roles.

But having retired from the Royal Navy, I then went into private practise in London and really started focussing back on my first love, which is justice and human rights.

Excellent.

So very good.

So I think we should start your presentation that we have an additional technical issue we are going to solve in 1 second.

So I have to share my screen and salute below us just with that.

So this should be fine.

Now let's share the screen.

Yeah, we got.

Sorry.

Okay.

Excellent.

So in terms of our mission, we're talking about explicitly, we've highlighted the word explicitly raising awareness about implementation of accountability, human rights provisions throughout the entire maritime environment.

And when I talk about the maritime environments, I'm talking for us, the port state, coastal state, flag state jurisdictions.

We're looking at the low water mark all the way out into the deep water oceans.

And why are we highlighting explicit? Well, part of the theme that we'll talk about today really is the lack of traditionally talking about abuses or exposing them.

So we're very explicit in the way that we do it through our publications and our case studies.

And our vision is very simple, is to end human rights abuses at sea.

In fact, Amnesty International their vision is to end human rights abuse, ours is at sea.

But we work with international organisations and NGO partners around the world.

And then just to really highlight that, and I'm hoping that everybody can see these slides again, put it in chat if you can't.

But just in year seven, which was the last year we reported on, this year we will be reporting on our year eight, having entered year eight as of April.

In terms of the work that we're doing just from that screen internationally, we are covering global areas with global states and we're really engaging at state non-state actor level, commercial level, academic, civil society.

But we are a small organisation indeed.

We're a virtual organisation and a lot of people ask us what we cover well, really we're focussing on two main areas at the moment and that is access to justice.

We're doing that through a series of projects through our arbitration project, Fisheries Observer project, which again will come on, and most recently in Ukraine having been on the ground.

We're also looking at law reform and policy because it's no good just banging the drum as an NGO and not actually changing policy and helping change laws.

And we're doing that strategically through the Geneva Declaration on Human Rights at See, which was issued on the 1st of March.

And we're also engaged much more at state coastal state level with the Maritime Levy campaign.

We're also touching on issues of slavery at sea, children at sea and equality at sea, all of them, as you'll recognise, being an NGO whose entire purpose in themselves.

So really what we will highlight today in this very short webinar is the scale and the scope of what human rights at sea is dealing with.

And that really is an umbrella across, as we say, the entire maritime environment.

In terms of loss of images, in terms of really what we're doing.

Again, all of our publications, our research materials are all available online.

We give it away for free.

And just from the image that you have on screen at the moment is a variety of work covering review of UAE laws for the new 2020 maritime law.

Everything to rescue within the Mediterranean.

Refugees, migrants.

And of course, there's differences, too, as we know, between refugees and migrants in terms of classification and then working with governments, looking at IUU in terms of the illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing and also abandonment cases.

And really what we also look at is the effects, the ripple effects that it has on the families.

So issues of debt bondage, and particularly when the main breadwinner has either been lost at sea, essentially murdered at sea, or indeed they've been abandoned.

So really, where does human rights at sea fit? Because in many respects, this could be deemed for the lawyers, a Lex specialist, an area of specialist law.

And indeed, there's two schools of thought at the moment.

There is a progressive school of thought which wants to see really what we are championing and many other indeed academics around the world.

A champion is this lex specialist.

But also we are against, I say against where buffering.

Thank you very much.

As does the advantage of technology and chat.

We are buffering against what I call the old school and the old school approach, where you look at the UN convention Law of the Sea as a framework and it is as good as we're going to get.

Well, what we're saying in plain English is we can do better and we should be doing better.

So what we're looking at really now is planting human rights at sea in that Venn diagram on the screen is drawing and all the common language and all the other references and including international humanitarian law, which isn't included in there, which of course is very progressive in relation to the topics, very progressive in relation to Ukraine.

But bringing that all together and putting on the heading of human rights at sea, not our organisation to make that clear, but the heading of the narrative for human rights, say, and really for us that's based around the Universal Declaration 1948, and indeed, of course, the wider Bill of Rights.

So when we look at our successes really strategically, the developments, the Geneva Declaration on Human Rights, say, is our main focus.

Indeed, across all of our work, and I'll cover the four principles in a moment, it has its own landing page.

And again, the details are on these slides, which we will provide afterwards.

But what that is really highlighting our three years of work is that the Geneva Declaration and the way it's framed, including the annexes of the specific human rights that we're highlighting, are covered by the concept of human rights at sea proves that our founding principle and our founding principle is very simple, that human rights apply at sea as they do on land.

We were very pleased that the document was indeed soft launch on the 1st of March and received by the Mayor of Geneva within the canton of Geneva.

And of course, as those people who online will be aware, particularly in the hub with the UN Human Rights Council and everything that happens in Geneva, you do ultimately need to get sign off from the Canton and indeed the mayor's office.

So we're delighted to already have that.

But this is a work in progress, and it is something within the four principles of four fundamental principles that I go through.

We would like to see adopted a state and non-state actor level and across the commercial sphere.

And of course, the first principle really is that human rights are universal and they apply at sea as they do on land, because without that, effectively, the entire human rights framework doesn't work.

Secondly, that all persons at sea, without any distinction whatsoever, are entitled to their human rights.

Thirdly, there is no that we can find and we will stand to be corrected.

No maritime specific reason for denying human rights to people for their fundamental rights.

And then finally, that all human rights established under both treaty and customary international law must be respected at sea, we're not saying should we saying must? So it's not an affirmative word.

In terms of how we have operated and how the organisation has has developed in being successful in changing law and policy.

Last year we our most significant success was assisting in the changing of legislation, primary legislation in New Zealand and that started from one of our publications.

The publication itself really highlighted the failures, as we asserted by the state, by the New Zealand Government in relation to the failures to uphold the Maritime Convention on behalf of seafarers and providing for their welfare.

And we're very pleased that the New Zealand Government took this point on and we were very much in a supporting role to the Seafarer Welfare Board of New Zealand.

So we were supporting them to lobby to get this through and as highlighted on the screen now that simple single sentence of those few words has basically set a precedent globally that the maritime levy, which is the levy whenever a ship comes into port and is paid effectively into the government coffers, in plain English is that pool of money is now to be made available for the welfare of seafarers and visiting seafarers.

And so what? And the outcome of this is very simple that on the data published by New Zealand that up to 160,000 visiting seafarers across ten ports will now benefit from having greater welfare facilities and we're trying to do that again in Australia.

We recently issued is in our newsfeeds effectively a challenge to Australia, to the challenge to the Australian or new Australian Government of concern elections at the moment.

But the question is whether or not Australia is going to follow.

The money's there.

It's really who's going to own the maritime levy and the distribution of that.

So what we would like to see is the legislation put in place just like New Zealand, to then again set another precedent in another Commonwealth state.

For us our patron is Lord Teveson a cross-party peer in the House of Lords, our upper house.

And Lord Teveson, some asked the first question.

There's a parliamentary debate on the Government's focus and response on human rights to the UK Government.

For us that was really significant because the response that came back highlighted what we would say was a lack of depth of knowledge of what human rights at sea actually means, which really goes to everything that we're doing at the moment.

We've also this year had a House of Lords enquiry which we've discussed before, and it's really significant because this enquiry, which was also looking at Afghanistan, so very high level enquiry, was looking at whether or not the law of the sea, the  UN convention of the sea, is fit for purpose as reported by Lloyds List, effectively not fit for purpose without reform.

And in relation to what we've been advocating for the last well, now eight years, there's a significant amount of references not just to our organisation, but more importantly to the narrative of what human rights at sea means.

Stop me at any stage if we're got to go through this.

So what I want you to highlight again is say the slides will be made available.

Is that the actual enquiry was very clear that the words that we urge the Government to acknowledge that human rights at sea includes a wide range of rights.

Again, we have been saying this for many years.

So for us, without reading the rest of the text, it was fantastic that the House of Lords taking all the evidence actually agreed with our position on paragraph 228 explicitly highlights the Geneva Declaration, which of course we were delighted with because we believe it makes sense, but it does require state endorsement and to be driven at state level.

So again, when we're looking at strategic successes in relation to influencing law and policy, I think it's very fair to say that with a lot of support from other organisations, we are we are winning the argument for a greater engagement around human rights, saying what I want to do is just really now dive into some detail about some of the focus areas.

One was addressing cadets abuse, saying this is where young Marine cadets, which are operating all around the world at the moment, often under challenging circumstances.

And I must make it clear that this is not a generalised issue.

It is an issue that comes to us occasionally.

But in this case, it was a Panamanian cadet whose life was threatened by his line manager with a knife and being threatened to kill, working really with the welfare organisations.

When the vessel came into UK territorial waters, we were able to engage with this young man and we also engage with the company involved.

It was interesting that what was really highlighted was and in a lot of our work is this almost statement that we hear regularly that what happens at sea stays at sea and the out of sight and out of mind approach.

And this is the majority of the problem for the impunity and the fact that abuses are occurring at sea without a lot of knowledge unless they're exposed.

So what we said very clearly is there must be zero tolerance for any physical or mental abuse towards actually anybody at sea, but in this case, cadets, because they really are the future, particularly in the shipping industry.

But this includes cadet ships, including sailing in CPO, cadet ships as well.

And we're involved in another case that may well become public in relation to that.

We were very fortunate that Peter Dohle, Hamburg based large shipping company, engaged with us positively on this.

And I would like to acknowledge and I would submit a point of bravery because in the commercial sphere, reputation is everything.

But then if you look under the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the no show principle, actually what Peter Dohle did was they acknowledged that there was an issue and as they put on their statement, they engaged with us and they were part of that report, which is now, we understand, used within the training materials as part of the remediation within the system as well on the system of training within that company.

But also more widely.

And the point I really want to make here is that going right back to the start of what we're talking about, being explicit in what we talk about.

If we do not expose these abuses for fear of CSR or ESG marking down within the corporate world, then nobody knows what's going on.

We've also focussed, particularly last year, on gender equality and sexual abuse at sea.

This report was written first hand by a survivor.

I'm not going to use the word victim, but it was Survivor.

But the downside was that when it was published and it was published internationally, there was complete silence, particularly from the maritime industry.

So those people championing women's rights, gender diversity did not want to know about this document.

And that had the effect of firstly it not being supported, it being seen as something that might or might not have happened.

But when we're talking about victims and we need to get to a zero level of victims of abuse, and that's male and female we can't ignore the corroborated first hand testimony of those people who are brave to come forward.

And what the author said in that instance and again, just put some quotes on the screen was then used some really heartfelt words in terms of being crushed and feeling crushed.

That career is potentially cut short.

They are fear of saying anything that the individual safety on board a vessel because of course, you can't we could walk away from this room today, but you can't walk away from a vessel at sea.

All of these curtail their ability to effectively hold the hand up and say there is abuse going on.

And indeed, the point was the fear of the body was a fear of the individual in either not being believed or being accused of overreacting or that it simply didn't happen, prevented justice.

And that's, again, why for us is really important here.

Right.

See, that is that we do corroborate fact checked but expose these issues.

And it's not just in relation to what we're exposing, but the Merchant Marine Academy.

The US Marine Academy has finally been effectively the issue of sexual abuse and abuse of cadets was fully opened up last year and there's an ongoing investigation and that has taken a huge amount of bravery by those survivors to come forward.

But the fact that it's taken so long for them to be heard is something that is for us a gross abuse of their fundamental human rights.

So we don't just research.

We're we're not just an organisation that sits wherever the team is all around the world collecting information, but we do go on the ground, most recently in March in Ukraine, where we went to a time when we didn't know whether or not the Russian advances would be pushing from the east, further west through the ports, Kherson, in Nikolaev and then across to Odessa and Trauma.

So we went with a very small team, a very I would call it an interesting exercise.

But we went to and spoke to the people we needed to, and that was on the basis that we were looking at potential war crimes to seafarers and human rights abuses and effectively non-combatants under the international humanitarian law being caught in the crossfire.

A small example of what we do on a regular basis, but we do not always publicise it.

So having said all of that, are we having impact? Because, of course, that's what people want, really wants to know.

Again, as per our website, we've got an impact map that we're developing.

On our work and our review just last year, 51 states impacted by our work from law and policy, we put over 107 publications, ISPN publications.

And when I say publications, they are they're not academic reference publications.

They're human rights at sea publications.

And just under an estimated 11,000 conservative estimate, 11,000 pro-bono hours from everybody who works with us.

So the point I'd like to get across is this is not an insignificant effort to start exposing what we're exposing.

What I want to do is to circle back to something that really brought human rights to the forefront, which was, ironically, the pandemic and COVID 19.

And I look at it in the the lens through the lens in terms of the seafaring community, really at the start of the pandemic in early 2020, as we highlighted on the screen, the International Chamber of Shipping Estimates, because nobody knew at the time the numbers, around about 400,000 seafarers stuck at sea and those seafarers all moving the world's goods.

What I mean, this table, what we wear, our IT coming by sea.

But they were stuck at sea, unable to move away from those vessels or indeed in some cases, get medical attention for human rights at sea.

This was probably the best thing that could have happened for us in a strange sense, because before the pandemic, people were not talking about human rights explicitly or talking absolutely correctly about labour rights, freedom of association, wage theft, etc.

But people were not explicitly talking about human rights at sea.

Why do I like that? Well, it was during the start of the pandemic, the International Maritime Organisation, the International Labour Organisation and governments started recognising the humanitarian aspect and the human rights at sea position, particularly of seafarers.

But it wasn't just seafarers, it was all workers and everybody in that supply chain.

So what for us was really that human rights at sea came to the forefront.

And what we've now seen in the last two years is the language and the narrative of human rights at sea, not our organisation, but the narrative expanding and expanding within academia, expanding at state level.

And of course, as we've highlighted, even with the UK House of Lords report.

I would argue we would not have seen that in any level, any sense right at the highest levels of the UN, including the UN Secretary General, talking about it in 2019.

Does that benefit us? It benefits our organisation for our narrative, but more importantly it benefits the victims that are out there and their families that are are really subject to the all the abuses going on at sea.

So in terms of seafarers, I'll talk about the lens of seafarers and particularly for those on the webinar who probably aren't aware.

But the International Labour Organisation and 2004 established an abandonment database and that's where a vessel is simply abandoned sometimes with the crew or the board and sometimes not.

But really it's about the crew being abandoned on that vessel and some of the longest cases are between between four and five years.

The crew members have not got off those vessels.

That database is open source.

If anybody's interest is simply go to Google and type in the ILO database and work your way through that.

I highlighted also the issues of wages being withheld.

You know, the work, the really superb work being done by the unions to claw back wage theft is ongoing, has been ongoing for many, many years.

But the consequence is to say what from that is that the families who rely on those wage earners themselves can find them in indentured servitude, the kind of thing that you wouldn't think was happening in the 21st century.

But it happens regularly.

We've seen it firsthand, particularly in India.

When we went and spoke to families, the seamen, seafarers have the record books, sometimes their passports withheld so they can't get off the ship, they can't get a visa, they can't leave the country.

And if they lose their single point of record, professional record, they can't get another job.

So effectively, we have found cases where agents have removed their identity and national identity and a professional identity and held them on that vessel.

Again, we've highlighted some of these on our website, but welfare organisations and unions will see this in much more detail.

But the point here is that it's very rarely exposed to the general public, also vindictive behaviours or behaviour by owners.

I mentioned money agents there and also flagged states.

We have hard evidence of all of those behaviours going on and effectively the seafarers are held to ransom.

You either do it our way or you're blacklisted and again where we can we expose that.

But of course that's a risk to our organisation when people feel that they, they can try to silence that.

There's been some really good to go back one, there's been some really good initiatives from the industry.

The Neptune Declaration was signed by, I understand, 900 organisations and entities which really said that the seafarers, welfare and wellbeing must come to the forefront now, does not have any hard evidence that calls for change in law and policy potentially because it's about the collective voice, what we would like to see, the same collective voice talking about human rights in a positive sense, but it doesn't always mean that there are good news stories.

Bhupendra here, unfortunately, is no longer with us.

He was on board the Sea Princess and.

He committed suicide, which was widely reported.

It was a tragic case.

And all those organisations, including ours, who deal with such cases.

You can't unsee what you see, particularly when you're going through the evidence.

This case here should never have happened and no suicide should be happening at sea because of a lack of engagement either by the owner, the managers, or indeed access to welfare support.

Which also circles back to our point about driving this maritime levy project to give those seafarers and arguably their families de facto the best conditions, particularly when they are having their downtime and rest and recuperation.

And as I mentioned, some of the longest abandonment cases around about four years.

The MTI, which is in the picture there, reported there by The Guardian and also throughout the UAE, only came to the forefront because that vessel broke its anchor moorings and it was on a beach.

It was on a tourist beach, so you could see it and people started asking questions.

That goes back to the earlier point about human rights at sea and abuses at sea being out of sight, out of mind.

Unless we bring it forward.

So as I sort of start to wrap up here, all of the issues that I put on the screen covering diversity, sexual abuse, issues of stowaways and their human rights as well as abandonment and cadet safeguarding are all issues of the individual well-being.

And it's not just about corporate image.

And as I say in the statement here, everything that we publicly report on and objectively expose, we do believe affects law and policy and runs from the UN agencies across states and across the entire stakeholder arena who have an interest in welfare of all those living, working, operating at sea.

And then as we start to look really about businesses, we haven't spoken about corporates and of course we don't have time to go into huge detail.

Business and human rights really is starting to come to the forefront, particularly when we're looking at mandatory human rights due diligence.

And really the maritime human rights risk document that came out was a good step forward.

Our work is in that we're referenced in it as well.

It has UN intention, it's voluntary.

But the issue about enforcement and those effects and it's effective ability for effective remedy is something that we we don't know whether or not it's been effective or it's being followed because again, public reporting is quite limited and ultimately it's just ignored by these people who don't care.

So this will come back to us of last slides where we're talking about what we need and the mandatory human rights due diligence is coming to the forefront.

It's interesting that it's being led by, at the moment, European Union.

Let me just check how we doing on time.

We find the rates excellent.

So the European Union is really driving change here.

And what they've highlighted I've highlighted on screen is that due diligence instruments of the moment continuing to fail, fail the victims and that they're not getting an effective remedy.

So the directive that was was issued in March of last year or the text rather really is talking about holding companies to be accountable, having remedies available, and really looking at the second and third pillars of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights.

The point here is, if it does come into law, it's not a nice to have.

It's not a should, but it's a must.

It's a requirement for companies.

We see this as a game changer and skipping over to fisheries, because I've been talking about seafarers and the shipping industry.

When we're putting this in context again for those people in the webinar who don't know 1.6, 1.7 million seafarers moving 90% plus world's goods.

That's the size in the UK of the city of Glasgow.

But when you look at fisheries and you look at the UN agency, the FAA, whose figures we're looking at around about 35 million fishers within coastal communities and fishing water fishing fleets operating every day in amongst there.

There are abuses that are occurring.

In fact, the US Office of Naval Intelligence reported that the level of abuse on fishing vessels is an estimate of being around about 20 times more likely than on a merchant on a merchant commercial vessel.

And then last year we were involved with WWF and other NGOs in investigations into the disappearance and the unnatural deaths of fisheries observers of scientific observers.

And we spent a lot of time in investigating those cases.

The fisheries observers themselves are essential to sustainability.

When we talk about blue ocean governance, we talk about ecological sustainability.

Without these fisheries observers doing their jobs, we don't necessarily get the accurate feedback.

Again, they're fundamental human rights, particularly where it's argued that they have been murdered or there's homicide involved, have obviously been abused, the right to life.

And we have got an ongoing project throughout, particularly the Pacific area.

We did do an independent review into the death of a Kiribati fisheries observer.

And I just forewarned the the there's an image here that's pixilated.

But if you if you don't want to see it, please, please do not look.

But we found when we got involved in that that some investigation, there was a lack of transparency, a lack of accountability.

State authorities did not want to talk about it.

So therefore, the key words, impunity, lack of accountability and a lack of effective enforcement is a consistent theme throughout everything that we're involved in.

And there's Eritara when he was alive with his with his wife.

And please, if it is pixilated, but please look away.

And on the body of Eritara found in his cabin under suspicious circumstances.

And to this day, we were working with the family.

We have not been able to get a straight answer.

With a lot of effort.

So I've been speaking all about quite really bad things because the work that we do is looking into the dark corners that most people don't want to look into.

So positively, we've been working with Shearman Sterling, the international law firm, to look at enforcement mechanisms.

We're looking at a system, a new system of arbitration.

And that project is ongoing.

Really.

It's whether or not arbitration can be used as a as an effective remedy.

It's very much in the early stages.

We're hoping we can produce and give it away for free.

A blueprint for global remediation through arbitration.

But our starting point is that it must be victim centric and victim that it's not another excuse for corporates to get into a room under arbitration, close the door and nobody knew what happened.

But a deal was cut.

This is about the victims getting justice and their families getting justice.

But there's a number of questions that we've got to ask, which we've put up in terms of the substantive areas.

Which would the tribunal have jurisdiction on whether or not it would be effective to have those arbitration clauses within contracts of employment? To what extent we could prosecute? And indeed, what are the ongoing shortcomings? So naturally, there's still a lot of work to do.

But we do believe this could be a way forward for for positive change in giving victims the power and their families to have justice that's outside of any other remediation.

So really wrapping up now, if we're going to improve human rights, see which and I'm asked this question time is, is what do we need? And I've deliberately put it in bold, you know I'm shouting text here because we want it shouted is that there needs to be a long term ownership both of coastal flag and state level of the issue of human rights at sea.

The work has to be funded and we need to have an accurate narrative.

We need to check our facts.

We need to operate transparency with accountability.

We must have effective enforcement mechanisms and effective remedies.

We must objectively challenge existing legal instruments and policies, just like the enquiry by the House of Lords.

And it's not about being vigilantes, about saying Can we do better? But there's always a but, is there not? We do not see a comprehensive deterrent effect across the board to prevent abuses at sea.

We see an impunity from scrutiny and an absence of prosecutions.

We see a loss of CSR, corporate social responsibility and ESG loss.

And then we've got poor corporate knowledge because lots of people move on from their job.

So you don't have to have known issues being discussed.

And then finally, the kicking of the can is something that actively goes on as a tactic and an avoidance mechanism, which we're challenging at state and non-state actor level of let's just get on with the solutions.

And every day that goes by, victims and their families are being abused.

So let's not have another conference.

Let's not have another roundtable.

Let's get the right people in the room and solve the issue.

So I'll pause there because I've been speaking now for a while.

Over to you.

Thank you so much, David.

That was absolutely excellent and fascinating.

The first thing I'd like to do is to thank you, to use one word or two words, rather.

Human rights.

You use the human rights language, the language of rights to approach the problems at sea.

And you do not use corporate social responsibility, glossy words, or you do not use a particular category.

As you explain labour or maritime law, you approach all these problems through the human rights lens.

This is extremely important, extremely refreshing to some extent at a time when all, all over the world really human rights are under attack.

So it's extremely important that your type of organisation exists and are impactful as well.

I think you have some three pillars strategy, the research, advocacy and impact, and you've excelled at that already in a relatively short existence, and I'm sure you're going to grow further.

Yesterday, the University of Portsmouth received its REF research excellence framework resource, and we're pretty happy with the impact.

We've been ranked quite highly for impact.

It's certainly something which is very important to us.

So have plenty of questions and I'm still receiving questions in the chat and we have questions in the audience.

I'd like to get back to one of the thing which I'm sure caught the attention of the audience, sexual abuses, survivors.

So this is something which is poorly known, isn't it? So to what extent do you think that to work is going to you've explained that already, but maybe we go back to what extent do you think your work is going to to improve the situation? While you said, very well, it's very difficult for survivors to really want to talk about it.

You're at sea, there's no way to escape.

So what's the strategy in terms of rights based strategy, what sort of tools you use? So not just with in that case, but with everything that we do, we believe that the objective and balanced exposure of the issue, backed by corrobative evidence and indeed survivors giving their own firsthand testimony, is absolutely key to putting the issues in the public domain, because ultimately the areas and that we're working with today, a lot of the stakeholders working in a very closed shipping industry is an incredibly conservative and closed environment.

But unless people do not know about this, then we are unable to push the agenda at the UN level.

What the International Maritime International Labour Organisation level.

All right, excellent.

And obviously very much needed.

Yeah.

Okay.

We have a first question in the chat.

The first I see and everybody, I'll try to capture your question.

I see.

The first question from thank you very much for this and your work in general.

I think the proposal for an arbitration mechanism is an interesting proposal worth pursuing.

Can I clarify that it's being examined in the context of all human rights abuses at sea, or is it subjectively originally limited? At the moment we are looking at it based on the Geneva Declaration, on Human Rights, See and the Annex Bravo with those human rights that we have highlighted are are primary areas of human rights.

Of course, when we take our principle that human rights apply at sea as they do on land, you could take that as a blanket application.

What we spent the time doing with a team at Geneva Declaration on the Annex B is really homing in on what to what human rights do we what do we mean and should we focus on.

And that really is about the person and rights like not to be deprived of liberty, to be subject to cruel, inhumane, degrading treatment, right to family, right to education and a number of others.

So that's where we want to start with.

But it's a stage process.

And do we know it's going to work? No, we don't.

But we're going to give it a try.

Yeah.

And something very important, you said, because probably people have in mind Arbitration, something very secret, you know, happening behind closed door for businesses for the sake of business is business is always winning massive amounts of money.

For instance, I'm thinking about investor state arbitration is not the idea.

Right.

You want to have a quite different type of arbitration.

We want to flip it on its head because you're absolutely correct.

When you talk about mediation, that's obviously the invariably open mediations tend to be open with permission.

What we want to do is we want to take the arbitration model and the established arbitration structures around the world and open it up in relation to a victim centred or centred approach.

We have got a lot of ongoing discussions in the margins about this and there are many schools of thought of keeping it closed and it may not be an arbitration tribunal that we end up with, but this is the start of the project and where this sort of concept and the hypothesis is excellent.

We have a question from Vivienne.

Does David think that human rights at sea should influence the human right to healthy environments? As an organisation? Yes, of course that moves, that goes to the environment, it goes to environmental justice as well.

But just to be clear, for a given the Web now, we strategically have taken a decision with all the other international organisations and NGOs that are already doing this is not to replicate their work.

So whilst we absolutely acknowledge and agree with the crossover into environmental justice as well and ecological justice, particularly within the fishery sector, what we are as an organisation doing is staying on quite a firm.

I'm using my hands tramline or train track rather as a poor analogy and really focus on the fundamental and most egregious human rights abuses.

But we have commented on the new proposed UN convention in terms of biodiversity, which interestingly has absolutely no reference whatsoever, even in a couple of senses to the human rights of the very people who should be undertaking and enacting the convention.

So yes, we acknowledge, but for our work, there's just so much other egregious work to do.

Of course.

And maybe it's a good occasion to remind the audience that the right to the environment is a human right to start with.

And you can't look at human rights in a very sort of divided approach.

They all go together.

They are indivisible, as we say.

So actually working on any human rights is working for all the human rights.

And I'm afraid this is something the United Nation itself has forgotten.

Because when you look and you said you refer to that the ocean decade, for example, and all the documents around it, human rights are hardly mentioned, which is really strange because again, the environment and the environment at sea on land is a human rights.

So we want human rights to be approaching in a very holistic manner because they are indivisible.

Excellent.

I think we have questions from the audience now.

THank you.

My name is Sophie and I'm a researcher here at the university
of portsmouth's centre for blue governance, starting with first congratulating you for having taken your NGO so far and contributing so much.

We met a few years ago and it's good to see that things are moving forward and that's great news.

Secondly, I'm picking up on the point that Leila is making.

Yes, it is quite interesting and rather disturbing, really, that that's given the centrality of trade, of  seaborne trade, that the human rights agenda has not really been carried more literally at sea.

And that's so that's good that you're putting this on the agenda and that it needs to be linked to everything.

But what my my question really is to try and understand what the ILO has done.

How was the International Maritime Organisation have you engaged with them? What has been the response to them to your pushing this agenda forward? If so, the International Maritime Organisation obviously is effectively made up by the flag states and you have to have consultative status to be able to affect or indeed join in the conversation.

But also you have state effectly, flag state sponsorship, human rights doesn't have that and in order to be have consultative status, we have to be an international organisation which we're not yet.

Therefore the way that we influence is through our colleagues who work within the IMO and those within flag states who also influence there.

And we work with our National Department for Transport and we will work with the Maritime Coastguard in the UK and we will make sure that our publications and our findings and our reports are on those people's desks and we will meet with them.

But in terms of the IMO itself, we cannot affect the IMO at flag state level unless the flag states explicitly pick up the issue of human rights at sea within their own agenda, which is frustrating.

But we are only eight years young and again, this is a pathway for growing the weight of all of our evidence.

So we will be judged on our evidence and and on our publications.

But we do know that they are taken into account.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

I think we have another question in the chat from Andrew.

When we get to the question, I would like to ask please, David, what he thinks of the UK Government plan to send asylum seekers to be processed in Rwanda.

We all heard about that, I'm afraid.

And if not in agreement, does any of the suggestion ideas that you have, you know, any other ideas? Well, I absolutely do not agree in relation to what is being proposed.

And indeed, colleagues at the bar have been representing a number of the organisations that are undertaking the judicial challenges.

What we need, and it's not what we've been just been saying, but what many other organisations who are deep, more deeply involved is we need to have safe routes and legal routes for the migration issue.

And indeed at the moment is interesting being picked up in the news today about the potential deportation of.

And the highlight is obviously for Ukrainian refugees, not migrants refugees, but coming in via Ireland and that they may find themselves on a flight if it's determined by those in power that they may end up in Rwanda.

The Australian Government did very similar when they were engaged with Nauru detention facilities there.

Those were found to be inhumane.

But we also understand that we must maintain border security.

But that should not be the expense of us as fundamentally undermining established international law.

And one thing the UK or Great Britain has always stood for, most recently in this century, has been the fairness of the democracy.

And with that comes human rights, and there are positives and negatives to it.

But I think just being picky about the human rights you want because it makes political sense, simply not in agreement with.

Yeah, I agree with you, Dave.

You know that this sort of fragmentation again of international you pick and choose what you like when it suits you.

These is it is again not acceptable and sends a very funny message so we are all in agreement not to mention that, you know, in terms of post-colonial countries and post-colonial, the word equilibrium is just doesn't work, can't be acceptable.

Excellent.

Do we have another question from the audience? Not really.

I have maybe a last question for you, Dave, because this is something which has been discussed and seen in the media, at least for those of us who have an interest in the rights at sea and indeed international law, the UN convention.

So the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

It's not fit for purpose as far as human rights is concerned.

What sort of future do you see for that in terms of reform? And you explain very well that we had the discussion at the high and highest level with the country.

Well, it's interesting because we haven't yet seen the UK Government's response to the House of Lords enquiry, which I think everybody who's engaged in this issue is really going to be interested to read.

UNCOS is framework agreement and then we look at when it was agreed in 1982 and where we are now in 2022.

We're in a very different world.

So realistically, are we going to get all those states back together to agree changes? I don't believe so.

But what can we do is we can develop customary international law, we can reinforce national legislation, and we can stop the fragmentation, as you were mentioning, of international law and defend it.

Because without a rules based world, we enter chaos as we're seeing in parts of Europe as we speak right now.

The other parts of what we are driving, a very soft law approach and approach in policy way in terms of Geneva declaration, is that if we can get states to understand those fundamental principles and agree them which are correct in international law, then there's no reason why we can't embed the Geneva Declaration principles and a potential arbitration mechanism in global conglomerates with Amazon, you know, with Tesla, the these these really huge conglomerates within how they work and how they do business, which also affects states as well in terms of their attitude towards human rights.

So ultimately, is a state responsibility to protect the citizens human rights.

We can only do what we do.

We think it makes sense and we spend a lot of time with international law firms, academics, etc.

and operators.

What? Through the practicalities, are we going to see a change in UN gloss? I don't think so.

But can we affect customary approaches? I do think we can.

That's a positive conclusion.

So there's always a way to work around the system isn't there, which is very good.

So I'd like to give you a round of applause to David for this excellent presentation and excellent questions.

Thank you so much for being our guest today.

Thank you.

So as you understood everybody, the meeting has been recorded is going to be available online under the banner Research Features.

Research Futures webinars.

I'd like to thank my team, in particular He and Barnaby for the organisation of this meeting.

And again, thank you very much David for accepting to be with us today.

Thank you so much.

And thank you very much, everybody, for your very interesting questions.

See you very soon.