A new and vital public international resource where details can be submitted and recorded concerning missing seafarers and fishermen globally has now gone live. The first phase of the ‘Missing Seafarers Register’ as part of the ‘Missing Seafarers Reporting Programme’ has been launched by Human Rights at Sea (HRAS), an independent maritime human rights organisation based in London and established in April 2014.

Accessible through multiple websites including: <a href="https://www.missingseafarers.org/">www.missingseafarers.org</a>, <a href="http://www.missingmariners.org/">www.missingmariners.org</a>, <a href="http://www.missingseamen.org/">www.missingseamen.org</a>, as well as the HRAS home page <a href="http://www.humanrightsatsea.org/">www.humanrightsatsea.org</a>, the platform aims to build an accurate international database of the status of seafarers and fishermen missing at sea on a global basis. It will eventually become a multilingual database where cases of missing mariners and fishermen can be registered and tracked, with the ability for people with key information to post and update details through a moderated and securely encrypted platform.

The Programme is designed to keep the issue of seafarers and fishermen lost at sea alive and to raise international awareness by profiling individual cases to maritime authorities, flag states, governments, ship owners/managers, civil society organisations, NGOs and the general public, among others. It also aims to independently support legal investigations into specific cases of abuse, injury or even death at sea, where applicable.

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