Short Description:
How can the right to life be effectively protected at sea? This international BlueRights conference will examine how human rights law interacts with the law of the sea, maritime law, labour law, and other legal regimes across contexts ranging from search and rescue and maritime security to naval conflict, shipping, fishing, and offshore work. Particular attention will be given to fragmented jurisdiction, overlapping responsibilities, protection gaps, and the practical conditions needed to make the right to life meaningful in maritime spaces.
Conference Themes:
The conference will explore the right to life in three principal contexts:
- Use of force in the maritime domain
Including naval warfare, maritime policing and interdiction, anti-piracy, border control, maritime security operations, attacks on merchant vessels and seafarers, and contemporary conflicts. - Search and rescue at sea
Including duties to render assistance, rescue coordination, disembarkation, treatment of persons in distress, and the interaction between maritime, refugee, and human rights obligations. - Occupational risks to life at sea
Including fatalities and serious harm in shipping, fishing, and offshore industries, as well as unsafe vessels, fatigue, inadequate training, hazardous working conditions, and employer or regulatory failures.
Across these areas, participants will consider questions of due diligence, prevention, investigation, accountability, jurisdiction, responsibility, and access to effective remedies, as well as the relationship between the right to life and other rights.