The explosion occurred in the Unit-2 yard of S.N. Corporation, a few months after Nippon Kaiji Kyokai certified the Unit 2 yard under the requirements of the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships. While the Convention will enter into force June 26, 2025, many shipbreaking yards are seeking voluntary certification using Hong Kong Convention standards.

Human Rights Watch, the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, and other rights and environmental organizations have repeatedly raised concerns that the Convention provides for weak environmental and safety standards.

Human Rights Watch wrote to S.N. Corporation, Best Oasis, the Shipping Corporation of India, and Nippon Kaiji Kyokai about the September 7 explosion. Nippon Kaiji Kyokai responded on September 15 confirming that the company had conducted their audit based on IMO guidelines. S.N. Corporation, Best Oasis, and the Shipping Corporation of India have not responded. 

Countries at the International Maritime Organization’s Marine Environment Protection Committee meeting on September 30, including Bangladesh, should establish clear consensus that the Hong Kong Convention does not replace the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, which applies to end-of-life ships, and offers a higher level of control, the organizations said.

Following the explosion, Bangladesh authorities have indefinitely shut down S.N. Corporation’s yard where the explosion occurred, halted all work on the MT Suvarna Swarajya, and opened an official investigation into the accident. The Department of Environment has suspended the yard’s environmental clearance and ordered SN Corporation to report within three days why the yard should not be permanently shut down.

According to data collected by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, among the casualties in yards owned by SN Corporation since 2010, six injuries occurred earlier in 2024 across its three yards. Two of them were on the MT Suvarna Swarajya in May, when a falling pipe broke one worker’s leg and a steel rope injured another worker’s hand. In 2021, one worker in an S.N. Corporation yard died when he fell from a ship during a cutting operation. In 2020, another worker died, also in an S.N. Corporation yard, when he was hit by a falling metal cable.

Workers from S.N. Corporation’s yards told Human Rights Watch in July 2022 that the conditions at those yards were dangerous. A 27-year-old cutter said: “I face risk every day that I work in the shipbreaking yard. Nobody wants to work here because they know there is a risk and accidents may occur at every step. The owners do not provide us with any safety measures. They overlook these things.” He said that while the yard’s management provided him with a helmet and gloves, he paid for his own boots, goggles, and protective clothing, despite earning less than US$1.50 per hour, well below Bangladesh’s minimum wage for shipbreaking workers.

While the Bangladesh interim government has taken positive steps to address S.N. Corporation’s alleged failure to ensure worker safety, international corporations that enabled the MT Suvarna Swarajya to be dismantled under alleged unsafe conditions should also be held accountable, the groups said. At a minimum, if found responsible, the companies involved, including S.N. Corporation, Best Oasis, and the Shipping Corporation of India, should pay for the medical treatment, long-term rehabilitation, and compensation to those injured, and provide compensation for workers who were killed. In response to questions about measures they are taking to provide compensation, the companies did not respond.

Cash buyers like Best Oasis serve as scrap dealers for end-of-life ships. The use of cash buyers has the effect of shielding ships’ original owners and operators from accountability for deaths and injuries taking apart their ships. Given that the three main cash buyers, including Best Oasis, sell ships almost exclusively to yards in South Asia where labor rights abuses and environmental harms have been well-documented, it is reasonable to expect that shipping companies that sell end-of-life ships through cash buyers know that their ship will likely be scrapped under abusive and environmentally damaging conditions.

Many cash buyers typically use shell companies or ship registries with lower regulatory burdens as part of their final voyage package, to further obfuscate the beneficial owner of the ship before it is sold to a shipbreaking yard with minimal environmental and safety requirements.

Many shipping companies, including some of those based in Europe and North America, use cash buyers to circumvent international and regional regulations that ban dumping their ships in subpar yards to increase their profit.

In 2019 the Bangladesh High Court ordered that vessels sailing under flags that have been gray- and black-listed for persistent violations by port state controls, should not be allowed to be imported into Bangladesh. However, more than 100 end-of-life ships were imported under gray- and black-listed flags last year to Bangladesh, in violation of the High Court order.

To be imported to Bangladesh for breaking, a ship must be issued a “No Objection Certificate” from the Bangladesh Ship Recycling Board, indicating that there are no hazardous materials onboard. The Department of Environment must also issue an environmental clearance certificate, and the Department of Explosives must issue “gas free for man entry,” and “gas free for hot work” certificates.

In a 2023 report, Human Rights Watch viewed 21 leaked hazardous waste certificates for ships entering Bangladesh to be dismantled. The language was consistently pro forma and, in some cases, verbatim, suggesting that the parties drafting the certificates were not conducting adequate inspections of the actual materials onboard the ships. This apparent lack of genuine inspection and oversight exponentially increases the risk of accidents like the explosion on the MT Suvarna Swarajya, the groups said.

Bangladesh’s interim government should enforce the 2009 High Court orders that halted the import of ships for recycling until there were “satisfactory provisions for the safety of the workers,” and properly enforce the High Court’s 18-point directive and subsequent orders that require rigorous health and safety standards and labor rights and environmental protections, including the ban on importing ships under gray- and black-listed flags.

The Ministry of Industries should immediately shut down any shipbreaking yards employing children, and any yards found to have night operations or are otherwise seriously violating workers’ rights. The Ministry should set a timebound directive to yards to move all ship recycling operations off the beach because dismantling ships on the sand is inherently more dangerous for workers and environmentally damaging. The worksite itself is full of hazards and it is impossible for emergency vehicles to traverse the sandy beach to access the job sites in case of injuries or fire. Shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh should install proper industrial platforms in accordance with the Basel Convention Technical Guidelines on Ship Recycling.

In line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, if not already in place, shipping companies should adopt formal and explicit due diligence policies that ensure the company maintains oversight of where ships are recycled and ensures that ships, including those previously owned or operated by the company, are not discarded in yards that use the beaching method. Given the loopholes and the urgent need for stronger regulation of ship recycling, Human Rights Watch and the NGO Shipbreaking Platform believe that adequate voluntary due diligence by shipping companies requires stopping all sales through cash buyers.

Many European shipping companies are knowingly sending their end-of-life ships for scrap in dangerous and polluting yards in Bangladesh, Human Rights Watch and the NGO Shipbreaking Platform said in a report released today.

The 90-page report “Trading Lives for Profit: How the Shipping Industry Circumvents Regulations to Scrap Toxic Ships on Bangladesh’s Beaches” finds that Bangladeshi shipbreaking yards often take shortcuts on safety measures, dump toxic waste directly onto the beach and the surrounding environment, and deny workers living wages, rest, or compensation in case of injuries. The report reveals an entire network used by shipowners to circumvent international regulations prohibiting the export of ships to facilities like those in Bangladesh that do not have adequate environmental or labor protections.

The Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships, which will enter into force in 2025, should be strengthened to ensure a safe and sustainable ship recycling industry, the groups said. Countries should adhere to existing international labor and environmental laws regulating the disposal of ships, including the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.
 
The report draws on interviews with 45 shipbreaking workers and workers’ relatives and 10 doctors and experts on ship recycling and Bangladesh environmental and labor laws, as well as analysis of public shipping databases, company financial reports and websites, Bangladesh maritime import records, and leaked import certificates. Human Rights Watch wrote to 21 companies seeking a response to our findings, including shipbreaking yards, shipping companies, flag registries, and cash buyers as well as the International Maritime Organization and four Bangladeshi government agencies.
Bangladesh is a top destination for scrapping ships. Since 2020, approximately 20,000 Bangladeshi workers have ripped apart more than 520 ships, far more tonnage than in any other country.
 
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has described shipbreaking as one of the world’s most dangerous jobs. Workers consistently said that they are not provided with adequate protective equipment, training, or tools to safely do their jobs. Workers described using their socks as gloves to avoid burning their hands as they cut through molten steel, wrapping their shirts around their mouths to avoid inhaling toxic fumes, and carrying chunks of steel barefoot.
 
Workers described injuries from falling chunks of steel or being trapped inside a ship when it caught fire or pipes exploded. Lack of accessible emergency medical care at shipyards meant that, in many cases, workers were forced to carry their injured coworkers from the beach to the road and find a private vehicle to take them to a hospital. In Bangladesh, the life expectancy for men in the shipbreaking industry is 20 years lower than the average. As a 31-year-old worker said, “If I am distracted for even a moment in the place where I work, I could die immediately.”
 
A 2019 survey of shipbreaking workers estimated that 13 percent of the workforce are children. Researchers noted, however, that this number jumps to 20 percent during illegal night shifts. Many workers interviewed began working at about age 13.
Shipbreaking workers said that they are often denied breaks or sick leave, even when they are injured on the job, violating Bangladesh labor laws. In most cases, workers are paid a fraction of what they are legally entitled to under Bangladesh’s minimum wage regulations for shipbreaking workers. Workers are rarely given formal contracts, which means that yard owners can cover up worker deaths and injuries. When workers attempt to unionize or protest conditions, they are fired and harassed.
 
Shipyards in Bangladesh use a method called “beaching” in which ships sail full steam onto the beach during high tide to be taken apart directly on the sand instead of using a dock or contained platform. Since the work is done directly on the sand, the worksite itself is full of hazards and toxic waste is dumped directly into the sand and sea. Toxic materials from the vessels, including asbestos, is handled without protective equipment and in some cases sold on the second-hand market, affecting health in surrounding communities.

International and regional laws prohibit the export of ships to places like the yards in Bangladesh that do not have adequate environmental or labor protections. Yet many shipping companies have simply found ways to circumvent regulations and avoid culpability, Human Rights Watch and the NGO Shipbreaking Platform said.
 
Ships sailing under an EU flag are required to recycle their ships in an EU-approved facility, none of which are in Bangladesh. Companies avoid the requirements by using a “flag of convenience” from another country.
 
Flags of convenience are sold by flag registries which, in many cases, are private companies operating in a different country from their flag state. In 2022, while over 30 percent of the world’s end-of-life fleet was owned by European companies, less than 5 percent had an EU flag when they were sold for scrap.
 
Shipping companies hoping to dump their ships in Bangladesh usually sell their ship to a scrap dealer called a cash buyer. In many cases, the buyer uses a shell company during its sale to scrapyards in Bangladesh, making it difficult to track the entity that actually controls and benefits from the sale.
 
A lack of enforcement of international laws and regulatory standards further enables ships to be scrapped under dangerous and environmentally damaging conditions. Waste declarations for ships imported to Bangladesh are often completed without any oversight, transparency, or clear accreditation, with potentially fatal consequences. Exporting countries outright ignore the requirements under the Basel Convention to obtain prior informed consent from the importing country and to ensure that end-of-life ships are only sent to countries with sufficient capacity for environmentally sustainable management of toxic waste.
 
While the International Maritime Organization (IMO), shipping companies, and shipbreaking yards promote the Hong Kong Convention as the solution to a safe and sustainable ship recycling industry, experts and activists have long-lamented major gaps in the convention that weaken its ability to provide an adequate level of regulation.

Instead of investing time and resources in greenwashing unsafe practices, companies should invest in proven safe methods of ship recycling, and they should stop insisting that beaching ships is safe, Human Rights Watch and the NGO Shipbreaking Platform said.
 
To ensure global capacity to safely recycle the projected massive influx in end-of-life ships over the next decade, shipping companies should invest in building stable platform facilities at a standard that fully protects workers’ rights and include mechanisms for the downstream management and disposal of waste, Human Rights Watch and the NGO Shipbreaking Platform said. The EU should revise its Ship Recycling Regulation to effectively hold shipping companies liable and stop them from circumventing the law.