Seafarers are not collateral damage
This World Maritime Day, let us spare a thought for India’s 300,000-strong seafaring workforce, increasingly caught in wars and piracy they had no part in starting
This year’s World Maritime Day theme is “From Policy to Practice: Powering Maritime Excellence”, which sounds bureaucratic. Every year, the day reminds us that ships carry more than 80 per cent of world trade. For India, this year’s theme is a stark indictment. The distance between rules on paper and safety at sea is now being measured in coffins.
India supplies more than 300,000 seafarers to the global merchant fleet: engine-room fitters, cadets and chief engineers whose wages sustain entire villages. Since the war on Iran began, at least ten Indian sailors have been killed and dozens injured around the Strait of Hormuz, in attacks by both American and Iranian forces. Three died aboard MT Settebello in June; among them was an engine fitter, six months into his first voyage, the sole earner for his family. This week, another Indian was killed when a bulk carrier was struck in the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, piracy has returned to the Horn of Africa. In August, two hijacked vessels carried 22 Indian crew.
The tragedy is how familiar this has become. Seafarers are hired through recruitment agencies, placed on flag-of-convenience ships, sometimes on tankers accused of sanctions-busting, and left in a legal grey zone when missiles arrive. Families speak of no warning, no compensation and no answers.
The international community must begin with first principles. Merchant ships are civilian objects under humanitarian law, not bargaining chips in a blockade. Belligerents must give warning, allow engine rooms to be evacuated, and prefer boarding to missiles. The IMO and the UN should create an independent mechanism to investigate attacks on seafarers, because impunity guarantees repetition.
On piracy, naval patrols must be coordinated and sustained, but lasting security also requires giving Somalia’s coastal communities an alternative to the ransom economy. And “policy to practice” must mean that flag states enforce the Maritime Labour Convention’s guarantees on repatriation, abandonment and compensation. India has begun to act. It has announced a real-time dashboard to track Indian crew in the Gulf and advised shipping companies against hiring new Indian seafarers for Hormuz voyages. But shifting liability onto employers is not a strategy. New Delhi should blacklist recruitment agencies that place crew on risky or shadow-fleet vessels, make war-risk insurance and prompt death compensation mandatory, and set up a permanent crisis cell with evacuation protocols.
The Navy’s escort and rescue role in the Arabian Sea should be expanded and formalised. Above all, India must use its weight as one of the world’s largest suppliers of seafarers, and its standing with both Washington and Tehran, to demand safe passage and accountability in plain language, not muted statements.
There is also a structural case. Too much of India’s seafaring workforce sails on foreign flags with little bargaining power. More Indian-flagged tonnage, stronger training and a seafarer welfare fund would give crews real options and leverage.
On this Maritime Day, the pledge should be simple: no Indian sailor should ever die for someone else’s war.
