Systemic Risks Fisheries

 
Fishing is characterised by systemic conditions that create heightened human and labour rights risks. Fishing vessels operate across vast geographical areas, often far from ports, regulators and support services, and outside national waters and jurisdictions. 
Fishers spend weeks or months at sea with limited contact with authorities, trade unions, families and independent oversight – obscuring abuses and making monitoring, reporting and remediation far harder. 
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Flags of Non-Compliance
The FONC system enables operators to choose the country to flag a vessel, with little or no connection to where it is owned or operated.
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Sub-Contracting + Precarious Employment
Fishers are frequently engaged without written contracts, through crewing intermediaries or labour brokers rather than by the vessel operator.
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High Mobility Work
Fishing is inherently global and mobile. Fishers regularly cross jurisdictions and may be recruited in one country through intermediaries based in another.
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Isolation + Lone Working
Isolation is the defining condition of work in fishing, and the major reason every other risk here goes unseen. A fisher on a distant-water vessel may go months, or even years, without setting foot ashore.
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