Confined Without Care: Seafarer Abandonment as Deprivation of Liberty

International law treats the abandonment of seafarers as a failure of the shipowner's labour obligations, to be remedied through compulsory financial security under Standard A2.5.2 of the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006. That qualification is accurate but incomplete. Where a crew remains on board a foreign vessel for months without wages, without repatriation, without regularised immigration status and without the means to go ashore, the situation also satisfies the settled test for deprivation of liberty under Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: objective confinement in a restricted space for a non negligible period, absent valid consent. This article defends that second qualification and addresses the attribution problem it raises. Drawing on the case law on confinement by non State actors and on confinement aboard vessels, it argues that responsibility follows effective control over the seafarer's ability to leave the ship, a control exercised jointly by the flag State and the port State. It proposes an operational test of five questions and illustrates the argument with recent Brazilian abandonment proceedings. Preprint: author's manuscript, not peer reviewed.