Seafarer Abandonment: Unpaid Wages, Failed Repatriation and the Human Cost at Sea
A vessel does not have to be dead in the water for its crew to have been abandoned. Across global shipping, seafarers are continuing to work aboard operational ships while wages disappear, contracts expire, repatriation is delayed and the basic conditions of life at sea begin to break down. For Mohamed Arrachedi, who deals with these cases across the Arab World and Iran for the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the problem is no longer identifying what abandonment looks like. The regulations already exist. The far harder question is why they are still not being enforced. International Transport Workers’ Federation
There is a persistent image attached to the word abandonment in maritime, one of a silent vessel sitting at anchor with an owner who has vanished, a crew left onboard without money or any obvious route home, but the reality Mohamed Arrachedi encounters through his work with the International Transport Workers’ Federation is often far less dramatic at the beginning and, perhaps because of that, far easier for the industry to overlook.
The ship may still be sailing, cargo may still be moving and the crew may still be working, yet wages have stopped arriving, somebody's contract ended weeks ago, repatriation has been pushed to another port because it will be cheaper from there, or provisions, fuel and basic services have started to deteriorate while the people onboard continue being told that everything will be resolved soon.
Arrachedi, the ITF FOC Network Coordinator for the Arab World and Iran, works across an area stretching from North Africa through the Middle East and Iran, dealing directly with Maritime Labour Convention complaints, unpaid wages, repatriation problems and abandonment. His perspective comes not from examining the problem at a distance, but from the cases arriving on his desk and phone from seafarers who may already have spent months waiting for somebody to honour obligations that should never have been negotiable in the first place.
Seafarer Abandonment Can Begin While the Vessel Is Still Operating
Under the Maritime Labour Convention, the threshold for abandonment is much clearer than many seafarers may realise. Arrachedi explains that a seafarer can be considered abandoned when wages have remained unpaid for two months, when an owner fails or refuses to arrange repatriation once the contractual obligation to do so has arisen, or when essential needs such as food, water and fuel are no longer being provided.
Importantly, those conditions do not all need to exist at the same time. One can be enough. The International Labour Organization maintains the Maritime Labour Convention as the central international framework setting minimum working and living standards for seafarers. Maritime Labour Convention, 2006
That matters because abandonment can exist long before a vessel visually resembles a ship in crisis. A crew member can still be standing watch, maintaining machinery or handling cargo while already meeting the international definition of an abandoned seafarer, which helps explain why some cases deteriorate for months before outside assistance is requested.
The delay can be costly in every sense, because the longer wages remain unpaid and contracts remain unresolved, the more likely it becomes that an apparently straightforward employment dispute begins accumulating additional problems involving immigration status, documentation, insurance, vessel movements and the practical ability to get somebody home.
When two months without wages becomes twelve
One of the cases Arrachedi describes involves two Ethiopian seafarers who had gone 12 months without receiving their wages.
The vessel was associated with a maritime registry that had ratified the Maritime Labour Convention, meaning the requirement to pay seafarers monthly was neither obscure nor uncertain. Arrachedi's assessment is particularly uncomfortable because he rejects the idea that such a prolonged failure can simply be dismissed as somebody forgetting to pay. The employer knew the obligation existed, knew the crew should have been paid and nevertheless allowed the situation to continue.
Even the sums involved expose something deeply troubling about the economics behind some of these cases. Arrachedi says the two men were earning around US$200 a month, while other cases he has encountered have involved wages as low as US$75 a month, figures that place abandonment within the much broader question of systemic exploitation and the value assigned to maritime labour depending upon where the worker comes from.
By the time the Ethiopian seafarers finally sought assistance, their contracts had already expired, immigration complications were emerging and repatriation itself had become a separate problem that now needed to be negotiated alongside the recovery of twelve months of outstanding wages. The delay had transformed what should have been a simple monthly obligation into a structural problem involving several jurisdictions and several different sets of responsibilities.
Their vessel was also in the Hormuz region, where the wider conflict was making the process of resolving their case and arranging repatriation more difficult.
When abandonment meets a conflict zone
Iran and the Strait of Hormuz are not the cause of the global abandonment crisis, nor should they become a convenient headline through which every abandonment case is viewed, but Arrachedi's experience in the region demonstrates how much more vulnerable a seafarer becomes when an existing labour failure collides with geopolitical instability.
In another case received from a vessel in Iran, seafarers reported sleeping on deck in extreme heat because there was no fuel and therefore no air conditioning. The vessel was experiencing a blackout, refrigeration was failing and provisions were beginning to deteriorate, while the absence of lighting was creating an additional safety problem because the ship itself was becoming difficult to see.
These are precisely the circumstances in which the distinction between an employment problem and a humanitarian one begins to disappear, because the seafarer who has not been paid is also the person who cannot simply leave the workplace, go home, buy food somewhere else or arrange their own transport out of the situation.
The wider environment around Hormuz makes that vulnerability particularly acute today. The International Maritime Organization continues to report heightened risk and uncertainty for seafarers in and around the Strait, with shipping affected by the ongoing Middle East conflict and thousands of seafarers exposed to disruption in the region. IMO information on the Strait of Hormuz and Middle East maritime situation
For a seafarer who is already over contract, unpaid or waiting for repatriation, those conditions introduce another level of uncertainty that has nothing to do with the employment agreement they originally signed. Vessel movements become more difficult, insurance and sanctions may complicate the route forward, ports may be harder to access and the simple act of getting somebody home becomes entangled with a crisis far larger than the individual crew member.
The labour failure has not been caused by the conflict, but the conflict can make escaping its consequences considerably harder.
Record numbers are becoming dangerously familiar
The individual stories are disturbing enough, but they sit within a wider trend that should make the entire maritime sector uncomfortable.
The ITF Seafarers' Bulletin 2026 records 409 vessels and 4,595 seafarers abandoned during 2025, compared with 312 vessels and 3,133 seafarers the previous year. Indian seafarers were again the nationality most affected, with 1,125 crew recorded, while the Arab World and Iran accounted for 152 abandonments, the largest regional figure in the ITF's published breakdown. ITF Seafarers’ Bulletin 2026
The financial scale is equally significant, with the ITF recording more than US$25.8 million in owed wages and more than US$16.5 million recovered at the time its figures were compiled.
Arrachedi recalled approximately 412 abandonment cases while speaking from memory during the conversation, while the ITF's published 2025 figure records 409 vessels. The precise final count matters for accuracy, but neither number changes the underlying reality that abandonment reached another record level and that thousands of people were caught inside it.
What the statistics cannot show nearly as effectively is how far the consequences extend beyond those 4,595 seafarers.
An unpaid seafarer rarely suffers alone
For Arrachedi, the human cost is central to understanding why abandonment cannot simply be categorised as a commercial disagreement over unpaid invoices.
Many of the seafarers he deals with come from the Global South and from communities where one salary earned at sea may support several people at home. Months without wages therefore do not remain confined to a vessel thousands of miles away, because mortgages or rent, food, education costs, medical bills and the everyday needs of a family continue regardless of whether the employer has honoured the contract.
A seafarer who has gone six or twelve months without pay may be dealing simultaneously with the stress of being trapped onboard and the knowledge that the people who depend upon that income are struggling ashore, which turns the official number of abandoned seafarers into only a partial measure of the real number of people affected.
Behind a single entry in an abandonment database there may be a spouse trying to keep a household functioning, children waiting for a parent to come home and an extended family that has lost the income upon which it relied, making the eventual financial recovery only one part of repairing what may have been months of uncertainty and distress.
The warning signs appear before the legal threshold
One of Arrachedi's most important messages to seafarers is that they should not wait for a situation to become catastrophic before seeking assistance, because the warning signs often appear well before the formal two-month threshold for abandonment has been reached.
He uses provisions as a simple example. If a vessel normally receives food for a month and the month ends without new provisions arriving, the crew should begin asking why, because a company that cannot fund basic food supplies should not automatically be trusted when it promises that several months of wages will suddenly be paid the following week.
The same questions should be asked when repatriation is repeatedly postponed, when medical treatment is delayed because of cost, when maintenance starts deteriorating or when an employer is unable to meet relatively small immediate obligations while simultaneously promising that much larger financial problems are about to be resolved.
The ITF's own guidance reinforces that message, reminding seafarers that the Maritime Labour Convention requires wages to be paid at least monthly and stating that going more than a month without receiving full pay is already a breach, even before the two-month abandonment threshold has been reached. Its advice to anyone who believes a situation is deteriorating is explicit: act quickly rather than waiting until recovery becomes more difficult.
Seafarers can also check current and historical cases through the ITF's abandonment list and the joint ILO/IMO abandonment database, both of which can provide useful information before joining a vessel or when concerns begin to emerge. ITF Seafarer Abandonment List ILO/IMO Joint Database on Abandonment of Seafarers
At sea, working conditions are living conditions
Arrachedi also makes an important distinction that can easily be missed by people whose understanding of employment is shaped by shore-based work, because a seafarer cannot separate the workplace from the place in which they live.
When a shore employee finishes work, they generally leave the office, factory or site and return to a separate home environment. A seafarer remains onboard, often for many months, which means that failures involving food, water, sanitation, internet access, medical treatment, accommodation or power do not end when the working day finishes.
For the seafarer, they become the conditions of life itself.
That is why Arrachedi argues that maritime cannot separate working conditions from living conditions, particularly when an injured or unwell crew member is told to wait until another port for medical attention or when an owner delays repatriation because moving the seafarer later will be cheaper.
The question in those moments is no longer simply whether a contract has been administered correctly, but whether the basic obligations owed to the person living and working onboard are being respected at all.
Fear and intimidation allow problems to grow
If early reporting is so important, the obvious question is why some seafarers wait months before asking for help, and Arrachedi's answer acknowledges a reality that cannot be solved merely by publishing another set of regulations.
Some seafarers are frightened.
They may face intimidation or threats onboard, worry that complaining will destroy future employment opportunities, or believe that challenging an owner will leave them stranded somewhere without wages and without a job. Those fears can be particularly powerful when there is a significant imbalance between the seafarer and the people controlling their employment, documentation and route home.
This is where the network surrounding maritime workers becomes essential. The ITF, affiliated unions, Stella Maris, seafarers' centres, charities and welfare organisations regularly pass cases between countries and regions, ensuring that somebody asking for help in one part of the world can be connected with people capable of intervening when the vessel reaches another.
Arrachedi's message is not that every seafarer must somehow solve their own abandonment case, but rather that the organisations capable of helping need enough time to work, because contacting owners, insurers, flag states and port authorities, tracking vessel movements and navigating different jurisdictions becomes considerably harder after months have already passed.
For seafarers who believe they may already be facing abandonment, the ITF provides confidential assistance at abandonment@itf.org.uk.
The regulations exist, yet abandonment continues to rise
This is where Arrachedi's argument moves beyond individual cases and towards a much larger question for the maritime industry, because abandonment is not growing in the absence of international standards.
The Maritime Labour Convention exists. Requirements relating to wages exist. Repatriation rights exist. Financial security requirements exist. Responsibilities have been assigned to owners, flags, insurers and administrations.
The difficulty, in Arrachedi's view, is implementation.
When enforcement is rigorous, operators understand that breaches are likely to have consequences, but when authorities are passive or systems are slow, unscrupulous owners can make a commercial assessment about where they are more likely to operate without serious intervention. Arrachedi describes that difference openly, arguing that some operators avoid jurisdictions where they know port-state control will be proactive and instead gravitate towards areas where enforcement is perceived to be weaker.
That failure has consequences not only for seafarers but also for owners who are trying to operate responsibly.
A company that pays appropriate wages, maintains its vessel, provides adequate provisions, invests in safety and funds repatriation carries costs that another operator may attempt to avoid, meaning weak enforcement can effectively allow a bad operator to gain a commercial advantage over a company meeting the minimum standards required of it.
Arrachedi therefore frames proper implementation of the Maritime Labour Convention not only as protection for crew but as protection for legitimate shipping businesses that should not have to compete with operators whose lower costs are being achieved at the expense of seafarers.
Zero tolerance must become an operating principle
Arrachedi ultimately describes abandonment as something maritime should approach with zero tolerance, arguing that responsibility for ending it cannot continue to fall primarily on unions, charities and welfare organisations once the damage has already been done.
Those organisations will continue rescuing seafarers, recovering wages, providing supplies and helping people get home because somebody has to be there when the system fails, but they cannot be expected to compensate indefinitely for failures by parties that possess considerably greater regulatory, financial and institutional power.
For Arrachedi, many abandonment cases are avoidable, which makes impunity one of the most important parts of the problem. If an operator repeatedly discovers that withholding wages, delaying repatriation or neglecting basic crew needs produces few meaningful consequences, the system has created very little incentive for that behaviour to change.
That is what makes the continuing rise in abandonment so difficult to accept. Maritime does not need another decade to discover what happens when wages stop arriving, contracts are ignored and owners fail to provide the basics required by the people living aboard their vessels, because the evidence already exists in thousands of cases and in the experiences of people such as Mohamed Arrachedi who deal with the consequences every day.
The regulations are already written, the warning signs are already understood and the organisations attempting to help seafarers already know what happens when intervention comes too late.
What remains unresolved is whether the wider industry is prepared to treat abandonment as something genuinely unacceptable rather than something regrettable that happens to a certain number of seafarers every year.
For the men and women who go to sea expecting to work, be paid and eventually return home, that distinction matters enormously, because none of them signed a contract agreeing to surrender those rights simply because enforcing them became inconvenient.
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CHIRP Maritime and The Seafarers’ Charity support Sea Views and its commitment to meaningful maritime conversations that place safety, seafarer wellbeing, and industry responsibility at the centre of the discussion.
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