Let's take the Philippines. When a Philippines overseas worker leaves the country to work on a vessel, he leaves with a POEA contract—a Philippines overseas employment—and a lot of times those state the minimum ILO conditions of work. I was an ITF inspector. I inspected foreign ships. Last year the ITF collected over $22 million U.S. in unpaid wages, where the Filipino and the Indonesian wouldn't even get the ILO minimum in their overseas employment contract. They would go six to seven months without any pay, or if they did get paid, it was half of what the ILO recommendation was, because there's no enforcement. We can say as governments, we can say as NGOs, we can say as unions and companies that we're going to enforce the ILO and IMO, and we're going to enforce all of that, but there's no enforcement on the high seas.
On September 13th, 2017. See this statement in context.