Catholic Institutions Fight Slavery on the Seas

Imagine crashing waves, a tilting boat, high waters, complete darkness, thousands of miles from your family, and hundreds of miles off the shore in the middle of an ocean storm. 

Now imagine you were being held against your will to be on this ship. Imagine being a modern-day slave.

It is hard to imagine such a thought, but for many fishers around the world, they are held in some form of forced labor. 

Christine Bader is a legal specialist for the Maritime and Transport Unit of the International Labor Organization (ILO) Sectoral Policies Department.

She was one of the many key speakers for the World Fisheries Day Virtual Conference hosted by the Sovereign Order of Malta's Ambassador to monitor and combat trafficking in persons, H.E. Michel Veuthey, at the United Nations Geneva Office. 

Here, a group of eight panelists were tasked with coordinating secular and Catholic institutions to stop the abuse of workers in an industry so close to every Christian's heart.

Since the beginning of our Church, Christians have been dedicated to the art of fishing.

Many of our earliest members like the apostles, saints Peter, Andrew, James the Greater, and John worked as fishermen and saints Thomas, Nathaniel, and Phillip are known to have fished in the New Testament. Their labor paved the way for some of the earliest missionary work of Jesus Christ such as the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.

After Jesus's time on Earth, Christians retained fishing as an important image. 

The ichthys or Jesus Fish became the secret symbol to confirm if one was a Christian or not during intense times of persecution in the early Church.

Later on, the veneration of the Virgin Mary as the Star of the Sea guided Christian seafarers all over the world, which is why many fishing villages have special parishes dedicated to Mary.

Today, fish are still used as a way of identifying who is Catholic or not such as on Friday during Lent.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Catholic institutions like the Sovereign Order of Malta (Knights of Malta) are focused on improving fishers’ lives.

Christine Bader began the conference by sharing the ILO's estimate that more than 128,000 fishers are directly in slavery today. And many more fishers are held against their will in ways that would equate to slavery legally speaking.

This was verified by Dr. Jessica Parks, a research assistant professor in the Division of Agriculture, Food, and Environment at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy for Tufts University. 

Dr. Jessica Parks shared a staggering statistic with the audience that just 3% of fishers work in conditions that fit the ILO and other nations’ minimum standards.

Chris Williams of the International Transport Federation, a democratic confederal workers union representing millions of transport workers around the world, connected the 3% number to the fact that under 2% of fishers today are represented in unions. 

Dr. Parks, Chris Williams, and Christine Bader informed the audience of the various techniques that the industry uses to entrap fishers into these subservient and helpless positions.

The main known method all highlighted was debt bondage.

This is happening to many fishers because they are being hired from overseas in unorthodox ways via agencies. And so, many fishers must pay their way to an agent to get to the company hiring them and this can lead to debts. 

Debt bondage happened to one of the speakers, Noel Selorm Adabblah, who came from Ghana to work in Iran. He said how some of his coworkers would have to spend 3 to 4 years working with no pay until they paid off their debt to an agent or another person.

But, this kind of employee treatment is not only limited to those in debt or to places less known for good employee rights.

Many ships are so far away from land so often that they are able to essentially force excess overtime without pay.

In the past, fishers were able to share in the amount they caught so if they worked overtime, their compensation would fit the ratio, but now with contract workers being the norm, their forced overtime work means free labor with no benefits. 

Since so many ships are hiring migrants not from the countries where they dock, the ships use coercive techniques where they take passports and change contracts once at sea, often changing the language of various rules posted on ship walls so workers are not able to know their rights and changing agreements so even if they can read the rules, they have no standing.

These employers will often retaliate against any worker that tries to organize by blacklisting them in shared lists with the rest of the industry barring fishers from their expertise. 

Companies will illegally move workers to areas they have no rights and cannot go to the government for help, thus facilitating human trafficking.

The ships go all over the world and will often not prepare their workers for proper visas and other documentation so that they can use the coercive measure of deportation as a threat to wage against any complaints to authorities. 

Yet, many ships do not even meet required minimums for port visits to even make these coercive threats by staying out at sea for longer periods than are agreed to.

When they do port, many fishers are illegally prevented from going off the ship even if the worker has proper documentation and authorities are often prevented from boarding to assess if the ship is properly run.

Even when fishers try to use technology or traditional long forms of communicating to the outside world, they have been denied. Fishers have been found to be held inside when at shore to prevent workers from signaling for help and many have had phones confiscated. 

The lack of pay or communication may not even be the worst of the treatment as far too regularly, malnutrition and overcrowded living conditions plague workers.

Overcrowded rooms, lack of pay, and other irregularities match how unsafe the industry is with over 100,000 deaths a year!

Noel Selorm Adabblah experienced many of these horrors once he left the industry in Iran for the industry in Ireland too, displaying the true transcontinental problem that exists and is not limited to any specific nation.

Thus, this trend is destroying cultures and localities globally who have created proud generations of fishers that know the specific amounts to be fished, where to fish, and so forth to not only continue a culture, but to preserve the fish-stock for future generations.

Executive Secretary for the General Fisheries Commission of the Mediterranean, who works on the Black Sea as well as for the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Dr. Miguel Bernal, explained the importance of these topics to the Mediterranean and Black seas.

He stated how over 700,000 people are directly employed as fishers and how many cities and regions are dedicated to this culture in the two seas. National cuisines further feature seafood making it vital for regional and national identities.

But, with the trend of hiring migrants to use slave-like tactics that lower wages, with the lack of benefits like health, medical, and dental, the excessive long times at sea, and the danger of the job, young people are refusing to become fishers and coastal cities are experiencing depopulation.

Therefore, it is not only the plight of the immigrant worker that is affected, rather it is also the plight of the domestic young generation who have lost another industry to work in.

So how can we fight slavery and work to get even closer to eliminating it?

Luckily this is where the Catholic Church comes into play and other international entities.

There is a four step process that has been identified by law enforcement across the world: detecting, investigating, prosecuting, and preventing.

Detecting that slavery exists is done by being present in the ports and by engaging with the fishers themselves to gain intelligence.

This is where Stella Maris, the Scalabrinian Missionaries, and other faith-based organizations come together including the non-denominational International Christian Maritime Association (ICMA) and the North American Maritime Ministry Association (NAMMA).

During the 19th Century, numerous seafarers’ groups were set up by various entities, many times local Christian groups.

The Catholic Church was one of the primary institutions for this, especially in the English-speaking world as the British Empire possessed one of the largest merchant fleets along with the USA.

By virtue of the then Apostleship of Prayer (Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network), and later via local Society of Saint Vincent de Paul chapters and various diocesan groups, the Church would formally create the Apostleship of the Sea in Glasgow, Scotland to tend to seafarers’ needs no matter their nationality, religion, or other differences in 1920. Now called Stella Maris, it would provide hostels for seafarers due to hotel expenses and lack of rooms available. It would also provide entertainment, food, drink, and of course chaplains for masses and other religious necessities like confessions.

Catholics would later unite with other Christian denominations to create the aforementioned ICMA and NAMMA for greater reach and advocacy in organizations like the UN, ILO, and ITO.

Today, Stella Maris now focuses less on hostels as many seafarers sleep on the ship, but Stella Maris does have many visitor centers, it provides legal help, conducts ship visits, and other duties like the providing of chaplains and religious services such as Stella Maris chaplain Father Bruno Ciceri, who was the conference’s moderator. 

Many national conferences of Catholic bishops will attach special orders and institutes to help their local Stella Maris branch and one of the more popular religious institutes are the Scalabrinian Missionaries who possess expertise in migration work such as their Scalabrini International Migration Network (SIMN) focused on migrants, refugees, seafarers, and itinerant people.

This is where another panelist, Father Marcio Torniazo, worked.

SIMN works in ports in collaboration with Stella Maris to provide food, lodging, legal advice, to promote democracy programs, provide chaplains, health, and education services.

Through all these organizations, investigating can be started because people are now able to detect problems through presence at the ports. 

Unlike with onshore work, off-shore investigation requires a triangulation of data such as documentary review remotely, discreet interviews with fishers, and other stories that get to the shore provided by the various networks aforementioned.

After this however, coordination becomes paramount as there are often too many entities with competing jurisdictions. There may be a fish and wildlife authority, a maritime authority, a port police authority, a national authority, and then competing international ordinances due to the fact that many ships fly different flags than their home ports.

This is why prosecuting has become so elusive because of different national standards.

Luckily, another panelist has created a good connecting group via his experience as a lifelong Catholic and British law enforcer.

Kevin Hyland, OBE, worked as a London Metropolitan police officer for many years including heading the London Metropolitan Police Service’s Human Trafficking Unit. 

In 2015, he became the first head of the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner for all of the United Kingdom.

During his career, he helped found the Santa Marta Group, a body which comprises civil society, law enforcement, and the Catholic Church to coordinate efforts in fighting human trafficking and slavery. He also leads Praeveni Global, another group focused on prevention.

Another avenue of coordination has been through the various entities that have sovereign authority to lead global missions with other nations.

At this conference, the Knights of Malta used their sovereignty and permanent observer status in the United Nations in cooperation with the Holy See, the Philippines, Kenya, and the United Kingdom to create better coordination between the aforementioned entities and to raise awareness to the audience who were previously unaware of these global efforts to support fishers. 

Likewise, the Holy See uses their sovereignty and non-member status to lead diplomatic efforts to provide protection for fishers. A great example is the aforementioned Stella Maris which is headquartered at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. Due to this closeness to a Holy See dicastery, the Holy See’s diplomatic arm, the Philippines, and the ILO now work closely with Stella Maris to provide protection for the thousands of vulnerable Filipino fishermen. 

The Vatican City State’s membership in INTERPOL allows the Catholic Church to further collaborate with other nations as all INTERPOL members share information to identify, investigate, and prosecute criminal activity like slavery. While the Vatican City may not even touch the Tiberius itself, work done by Catholic entities like Stella Maris can alert authorities in the Vatican that can then alert authorities in the effective countries.

This is why Catholics are unique in our efforts as lay and clergy because we have greater coordination capabilities to work at all levels from the local to the international level  that is required when dealing with the ocean.

The last mechanism and perhaps most important is our ability to pray for fishermen. 

Every year, there is an official day to pray for all seafarers, whether fishermen, cruise ship workers, or anyone else at sea plus their families. There are usually donation opportunities during this day too.

Both the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion are traditionally the strongest in their recognition of Sea Sunday, but this has grown to more denominations. 

This year, Sea Sunday fell on June 14th, so you can expect a similar date for 2025.

Therefore, no matter your economic status or work availability, there are plenty of opportunities for you to help clean up an industry that feeds the world.