Ending Illegal Recruitment
Fees in Maritime

This toolkit is designed to help ship operators investigate and prevent the payment and charging of recruitment fees among crew on their ships. It provides information on where companies can look within their own systems, and what they can do, both internally and outwardly to eliminate this illegal and harmful practice from the shipping industry.

The issue of recruitment fees is a deeply entrenched problem that requires effort from every stakeholder in the industry (not just shipping companies), and requires advocacy and awareness-raising right up the seafarer supply chain. As such, this initiative is one of several running concurrently to tackle the issue of seafarer recruitment fees. IHRB, Mission to Seafarers, ITF, ISWAN, Maritime Anti-Corruption Network and others are also working on awareness-raising among current and future seafarers, on educating the crewing agency industry, on building relationships with national governments. If you would like any information on any of these activities, please get in touch: Francesca Fairbairn.

For individual seafarers, we advise contacting your union, your employer, relevant flag or port state authorities (more information can be found here), or one of the supporting organisations such as ITF, Mission to Seafarers, ISWAN, for more information.

This resource has the following information: