IKAN
Building a digital platform to empower migrant workers in the fishing industry.
(Image credit: FiftyEight)
The Center for Ocean Solutions is a scientific partner on the IKAN team.
Environmental and social sustainability are inextricably linked, especially in the fisheries sector: Declining fish stocks can drive seafood producers to cut labor costs in order to keep fisheries profitable, perpetuating a cycle of exploitation.
This approach not only prolongs unsustainable fishing but also incentivizes wage theft and other labor abuses as producers seek to maintain profit margins despite diminishing returns. Reducing wage exploitation and empowering fishers to understand and exercise their rights are crucial steps toward ensuring safe and equitable work environments aboard fishing vessels.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 128,000 fishers are trapped in forced labor aboard fishing vessels worldwide, often far from shore. Labor abuses at sea include subjecting workers to forced labor, debt bondage, and poor working conditions. Due to the risk of repercussions, workers may not always report concerns, suggesting that the full extent of labor abuses in the seafood sector is likely underestimated.
Since 2021, Stanford’s Center for Ocean Solutions and the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, along with a team of international partners, have worked to address the lack of transparency and accountability in contracts and wage payments to tuna fisheries workers.
The project team co-designed the mobile app IKAN with input from workers, recruiters, civil society organizations, vessel owners, and government agencies in Indonesia and Taiwan. The app digitizes standardized contracts with audio and video explanations, verifies payment date and amount from both payer and payee, generates records for compliance reporting and auditing, and cross-checks reports against contract terms to flag discrepancies and connect workers to existing resources to support them in seeking remedy.
The project team is currently implementing IKAN for Indonesian fisheries workers on Taiwanese-flagged tuna vessels. They are also exploring new fisheries and the movement of migrant workers from one country to another for potential project expansion, while laying the groundwork for the long-term operation of the platform.
Elizabeth Selig | Managing Director, Center for Ocean Solutions
Jessie Brunner | Associate Director of Strategy and Program Development, Center for Human Rights and International Justice
The mobile app development and pilot phase of this work was funded by the Packard Foundation and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment’s Realizing Environmental Innovation Program.
Learn more
- Case study: Elevating worker agency & reducing exploitation in wild-capture tuna fisheries in Taiwan courtesy of FiftyEight
- Human rights at sea and access to justice courtesy of the Indonesia Ocean Justice Initiative