Sailors stranded on merchant ships without food, supplies, or a way home won new safeguards.
Ship owners will have to provide insurance or a bond to pay for sailors’ wages and repatriation under a new rule passed today by a committee of the United Nations’ International Labour Organization. The rule starts in 2017, pending final approval in June and a six-month comment period, Doug Stevenson, director of the Center for Seafarers’ Rights at the Seamen’s Church Institute in New Jersey, wrote in an e-mail.