In September 2023, Human Rights Watch and NGO Shipbreaking Platform released a report, titled ‘Trading Lives for Profit: How the Shipping Industry Circumvents Regulations to Scrap Toxic Ships on Bangladesh’s Beaches’, which sheds light on egregious human rights violations within the shipbreaking sector in Bangladesh.

While focusing on abuses that occurred in Bangladeshi shipyards, the report also highlights the accountability of the ships' owners, often European, East Asian, and Southeast Asian companies which circumvent international regulations to cheaply discard ships in Bangladesh rather than safer shipbreaking yards elsewhere.

The report outlines the poor working conditions at Bangladeshi shipbreaking yards, including extremely poor occupational and safety measures, dumping toxic waste directly onto the beach, dangerous night shifts, denying workers living wages, a lack of adequate breaks, or a lack of compensation for injuries. The report notes workers and surrounding communities are often exposed to toxic materials, including asbestos, heavy metals, oil, and toxic paints and compounds.

Shipbreaking workers are often internal migrants from the north of the country employed through labour contractors, which take commission for bringing in new workers. Employment is therefore often arranged verbally, leading to a lack of formal contracts, and workers are often employed on a temporary basis. Other labour rights violations include union-busting activity, with workers harassed or fired if they protest their conditions or try to unionize. Further, activists note that some shipyards have created ‘yellow unions’ that are not genuinely independent.

Ship-owners can circumvent international regulations to cheaply discard their ships in Bangladesh by selling the ship to a cash buyer, who often uses a shell company as a new registered owner during the sale to Bangladeshi scrapyards. The cash buyer then registers the ship under the nationality of a state with lower regulations. Further, while shipping companies often blame the cash buyer for recycling the ship in unsafe and unsustainable shipyards, cash buyers argue shipping companies choose such yards because they are cheaper.

The report notes a lack of enforcement and regulation of international laws and standards, including due to the inefficacy of the International Maritime Organization.

HRW make a number of recommendations, including to shipping companies. HRW argues shipping companies must adapt formal policies to maintain oversight over where ships are recycled and ensures ships are not discarded in yards that violate labour rights. Companies should also invest in ship recycling facilities to ensure ‘full containment of environmental contaminants, stable industrial platforms, protective equipment, and environmentally sound management of hazardous materials, including disposal’.

HRW reached out to 12 shipping and shipbreaking broker companies, six flag agencies and three shipbreaking yards. It also reached out to IMO, the Bangladesh Department of Environment, the Ministry of Industries, the Ministry of Labour and Employment, and the Bangladesh Ship Recycling Board. It received replies from A.P. Moller, Best Oasis, IMO, and Novonor; correspondence between HRW and the companies can be read in full below with the exception of Best Oasis's reply which the company requested not be public.