The coronavirus pandemic has not just brought mayhem and tragedy to people on dry land; it has left about 200,000 merchant sailors marooned at sea.
Because of bureaucratic and financial complications arising from the virus many of them have been away for over a year, well over the 11-month limit laid out in the international Maritime Labour Convention.
Some mariners have resorted to desperate measures in what the United Nations has described as a “humanitarian crisis” at sea. In the Philippines, Robert Empedrad, head of the country’s maritime industry authority, said recently that his organisation, part of the department of transportation, had received “alarming reports of seafarers killing themselves aboard ships due to loneliness and depression”.
More than 80 per cent of global trade still
