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A ground-breaking collaboration between unions and a labour-based human rights group has today announced plans to build and launch a pilot program to identify and combat human rights violations on commercial fishing vessels in the United Kingdom.

The announced partnership between the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) Fair Food Program (FFP) — the US-based human rights initiative widely recognised as the gold standard for monitoring and enforcing workplace protections in food industry supply chains — follows an explosive report released by the University of Nottingham earlier this year that exposed the horrific racial, physical and sexual abuse migrant workers face while working in the UK fishing industry.

“Human trafficking, forced labour, and other widespread human rights violations impacting migrant fishers working in the UK have been documented by the ITF and many others for years,” said Chris Williams, ITF Fisheries Section expert. “This partnership is another positive step in holding employers, the seafood supply chain, and the UK government to account to end the exploitation of migrant labour on UK flagged fishing vessels.” 

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