In foreign ports far from home, without pay or prospects: seafarers are repeatedly abandoned by their shipowners, complains International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF). For 2025, the London-based trade union federation recorded 6,223 so-called abandoned seafarerstranslated as “abandoned sailors,” reached a new high.
Abandonment here means that a shipowner, contrary to his duties, has, for example, refused to cover the costs of bringing his seafarers home, denied them maintenance and support such as food and water, or otherwise “unilaterally terminated his relations with the seafarers”. This includes not paying wages for at least two months. This is how it is defined in the Maritime Labor Convention of 2006. The sailors are often stuck. Your chances of getting paid are reduced if you disembark. There may also be problems with the port state if you have to leave the ship there to get home.
The organization describes, as an example, the case of an Indian sailor who has been on a ship off the coast of Nigeria with three colleagues since June 2025. “Every month we asked the company to pay our wages and send us home, but they don’t care,” the man is quoted as saying, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The situation is “worse than hell”.
The ship is identified by the ITF as “Eleen Armonia”. According to shipping apps, a Liberian-flagged freighter with that name was docked near Nigeria’s Port Harcourt in late January. The shipping company Eleen Marine in Bulgaria did not respond to taz’s requests for comment.
Victims mainly from India
According to the ITF, most of the affected crew members in 2025 came from India, followed by Filipinos and Syrians. If you look at the location of the 410 ships, they were most often in Turkey. However, the ITF sees the main lever for improvements in the flag states. Here Panama topped the negative list with 68 affected ships, followed by 46 vessels with no known affiliation and 41 flying Tanzania’s flag.
The ITF demands: Flag states should be required to record the beneficial owner of a ship, including their contact details, as a prerequisite for registration. Vessels repeatedly involved in cases should be blacklisted at national level; Here the ITF cites an Indian regulation as an example. In addition, states should investigate the use of flags of convenience, as is currently happening in the USA. In general, ITF general secretary Stephen Cotton also called for the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to be given more powers to coordinate the fight against abandonment.
The Association of German Shipowners (VDR) also criticized the phenomenon upon request. At the same time, spokesman Carsten Duif made it clear that Germans were presumably not involved: “Cases of leaving seafarers behind without adequate care, payment of wages or the opportunity to travel home must be clearly condemned in every form. These are serious violations of international labor and maritime law standards. As far as we know, this does not affect German seafarers or German shipping companies. Such incidents affect other regions of the world and actors who consciously move outside established control and liability structures.”