The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) has called on Taiwan to step up its fight against human trafficking at sea and provide greater protection to migrant fishermen employed on Taiwanese-owned vessels.
The UK-based nonprofit organization, which works internationally to protect the environment and defend human rights, last week released an investigative video and a report that detailed shortcomings in Taiwan’s management of its distant water fleets.
Taiwan has put a lot of energy into addressing illegal fishing, but it should also look at the issue of migrant labor exploitation in its fishing industry, EJF deputy director Max Schmid said in an interview in Taipei.
He said there is a close link between illegal fishing and human trafficking.
About 90 percent of the world’s fisheries are overexploited or fully exploited, so fishing boats have to work harder to get the same catch, leading some operators to fish illegally or use illegal methods to get cheaper labor, such as bonded labor and human trafficking, Schmid said.
Tens of thousands of migrant fishermen are thought to be employed on Taiwan-owned vessels, and their plight has been reported by international media and consistently highlighted in the annual Trafficking in Persons report by the US Department of State.
“Increasingly, when people are buying seafood around the world, they expect that it is traceable, sustainable and ethical. It would be bad for the reputation of Taiwanese seafood if it is associated with these problems,” he said.
Schmid urged Taiwan to conduct rigorous labor inspections at major overseas ports where Taiwan-owned vessels land and end the practice of using “flags of convenience” (FOC) registries, or make public the list of Taiwan-invested FOC vessels.
An FOC vessel is one that does not fly the flag of the country of ownership, but the flag of the country where it is registered — usually a country that has less restrictive fisheries and labor regulations.
According to the EJF report, Taiwan has one of the world’s largest distant water fleets, with about 1,800 vessels bearing the Taiwanese flag and at least hundreds of Taiwan-owned vessels registered in other countries.
Schmid urged the Fisheries Agency to publish a list of these FOC vessels to help international non-governmental organizations, governments and journalists identify illegal activities at sea more quickly.
He also urged Taiwan to adopt the International Labour Organization’s (ILO’s) Convention 188 and end labor brokerage fees in the fishing industry.
He also called for Taiwan to raise the minimum monthly wage for migrant fishermen employed in distant water fleets from US$450 to the US$614 minimum wage set by the ILO.
Fisheries Agency Deputy Director-General Lin Kuo-ping (林國平) said that the nation last year passed regulations to better protect the rights of foreign crew members.
However, “it is not that easy” to immediately raise the minimum wages of foreign crew members to international standards or Taiwan’s own minimum wage level, he said.
“It takes time and we are working on it,” he said.
There is an evaluation system that allows officials to weed out bad brokers, he said, but added that there is little Taiwan can do to regulate foreign brokers, whom he said should be the responsibility of their respective countries.
When asked if the Fisheries Agency is willing to release a list of Taiwan-invested FOC vessels as suggested by the EJF, Lin said that those are foreign vessels and not Taiwanese vessels and “in principle, we respect the authority of the flag state.”
However, if Taiwanese crew on these vessels are found to violate human trafficking laws, they will be prosecuted under Taiwan’s law, he said.
Asked if his agency would cooperate with Taiwanese labor officials to carry out labor inspections at overseas ports, Lin said this would involve the jurisdiction of other countries and these types of inspections can only be carried out if there is an agreement between the two governments.
“This is something we still need to work at,” he said.
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