Mohamed Arrachedi has spent years dealing with seafarers abandoned far from home, chasing unpaid wages, pressing shipowners and managers, and working with port states, embassies and maritime authorities to get crews repatriated. 

As the ITF (International Transport Workers’ Federation) FOC Network Coordinator for the Arab world and Iran, his work often begins with a message from a vessel few people can locate, owned through structures few can easily trace, and crewed by men and women who have run out of options. 

Arrachedi is publicly identified by the ITF as its Arab World and Iran Network Coordinator, working on seafarer abandonment cases across the region. The ITF says he has long handled calls from crews left without pay, food, water or repatriation, with earlier cases involving abandoned vessels in Sudan, the UAE, Egypt, Kuwait, Yemen, Lebanon and Libya. 

The broader context is equally significant. The ITF represents more than 16.6 million transport workers through more than 760 unions in over 150 countries, according to the federation. 

Reuters has also reported that seafarers were given the right to refuse to sail through the Middle East Gulf, including the Strait of Hormuz, after the threat level was raised, with repatriation at company cost and compensation under IBF arrangements. 

Reuters separately reported this week that Indian seafarers stranded near Iran endured nightly explosions, food shortages and broken communications before being repatriated. 

In recent weeks, however, Arrachedi said the calls reaching him have become more urgent. Seafarers caught around conflict-hit waters are no longer only asking to go home. Many, he said, are now asking for food, water and protection. 

“This is a very, very urgent situation,” Arrachedi said, referring to one case in which he was “texting with him till 1.30 in the morning”. 

He said one message from a stranded seafarer showed how quickly conditions on board were deteriorating. 

“Salam Alaikum, good day, sir. The situation on the barge is very critical. Only two or three days remain, and then there will be no food on the barge,” Arrachedi said, recalling the message he had received. 

The man, Arrachedi explained, wanted to go home because the vessel had been caught in an almost impossible situation. More broadly, he said, the same fear is now being voiced by thousands of seafarers stuck in the region. 

“We have been reached out to by more than 2,000 seafarers in those affected areas, but also in the neighbouring countries,” he said. 

“These seafarers are trapped in that area. They have not chosen to go there,” Arrachedi added. 

At the start of the war, Arrachedi said most of the calls reaching the ITF were requests for repatriation. As the weeks passed, however, the nature of the messages began to change. 

“I receive WhatsApp messages on a daily basis, sometimes 60, sometimes 70,” he said. 

“At the beginning of the war, most of the cases we were receiving were requests for repatriation,” Arrachedi added, “but after eight weeks, more and more are related to the lack of food, the lack of provisions, the lack of water and the lack of fuel.” 

In many cases, he said, the messages are accompanied by videos and photographs from crews who say explosions are taking place close to their vessels. 

“Most of the messages that we receive are very often accompanied by videos, by pictures showing that there has been a bomb not far from where they are, and they are afraid,” Arrachedi said. 

“In my 25 years, there is absolutely no precedent to what is happening now,” he added. 

The ITF, he said, has already carried out more than 500 repatriations. Yet the process is rarely straightforward, particularly because of the fragmented structure of global shipping, where the vessel, owner, manager and crew may all be linked to different countries. 

“The first thing is to approach the owners or managers,” Arrachedi said. 

But in some cases, he added, even identifying who is responsible for the vessel can be difficult. 

“Sometimes, we don’t know who the owner is,” he said. 

Arrachedi said the process is often slowed by the opaque structure of global shipping, where the company managing the vessel may be in one country, the seafarer may come from another, and the real owner may not be immediately clear. 

This lack of transparency, he said, makes urgent intervention harder, particularly in cases where there is “absolutely no protocol”. 

In one case, Arrachedi said he told a captain that the ITF had already spoken to its legal department and would again approach the port state and maritime authorities. 

“We have already contacted your embassy,” Arrachedi said he told the captain. 

“This is a case of abandonment,” he added. 

The captain, Arrachedi said, had not been paid for 12 months and was deeply worried about being repatriated before receiving his wages. 

“He is really, really worried and concerned about being repatriated before getting his wages,” Arrachedi said. 

However, Arrachedi said abandonment is not only a consequence of the war. Rather, he said the conflict has exposed a problem that was already deeply rooted in parts of the industry. 

“I have seen notorious cases of abandonment by absolutely unscrupulous shipowners, leaving seafarers starving as leverage to force them to leave and renounce their wages,” he said. 

“But the abandonment situation is not only linked to this war,” Arrachedi added. 

He said the conflict had simply exposed conditions that were already unsafe and unacceptable for many crews. 

“What the war has done is just put more light on a situation that, in itself, was already bad,” Arrachedi said. 

The people at the centre of the crisis, he added, are workers who are already exposed by the nature of their jobs. 

“The seafarers, men and women, are vulnerable. They are exposed,” Arrachedi said. 

He also recalled one distressing message from a crew member whose vessel had come under attack. 

“My vessel was attacked. My vessel was attacked,” Arrachedi said, quoting the seafarer’s words. 

For Arrachedi, the emotional weight of the cases lies in the fact that each request for help comes from a person with a family waiting somewhere on shore. 

“These are workers, and it’s really, really affecting,” he said. 

“At the end of the day, it is a seafarer with a name, with a nationality, with a family behind him,” Arrachedi added. 

“You cannot deal with it as a file, as a case, as a number,” he said. 

In another exchange, Arrachedi said he tried to reassure a captain who had clearly reached the end of his strength. 

“Did you sleep? Okay, captain, I will get in touch again this afternoon,” Arrachedi said he told him. 

By the time seafarers contact the ITF, Arrachedi said, many have already exhausted every other option. 

“He has tried everything before coming to us,” Arrachedi said, referring to one stranded seafarer. 

The same seafarer, he added, kept repeating the same plea. 

“You are our only hope, so please help us. Please, we want to go home. Please, we don’t want to die here,” Arrachedi said, recalling what the seafarer told him.