Dark webs: Uncovering those behind forced labour on commercial fishing fleets

In 2021 alone, 128,000 fishers were trapped in forced labour aboard fishing vessels, often whilst in the high seas where workers are isolat- fishing vessels, often ed, conditions are hazardous and there is little regulatory oversight, though whilst in the high seas this figure “likely significantly understates the full extent of the problem”, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO. [...] To achieve this, we built a behind force labour database of nearly 500 commercial fishing vessels accused of forced labour violations, carrying out between January 2010 and May 2023, one of the largest in the world, and the largest ownership compared it with another dataset of over 1,000 vessels accused of illegal, analysis of these unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, five times more than th. [...] Spain tops this list with 12 vessels repre- senting 5 percent of the total for which legal information is available, followed by Russia (7 vessels) and the UK (6 vessels), making it one 22.5 percent of of the top 5 countries of companies owning vessels accused of forced commercial fishing labour. [...] The Extractives Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) for instance was launched in 2002 to facilitate disclosure by governments and firms of the revenues received or paid across resource concessions and extraction has since 2020 promoted public beneficial ownership registries of all owners of companies and entities in the extractive industries. [...] This should be accompanied by the creation of unified and publicly available lists of vessels accused of forced labour and IUU fishing.