Stranded sailor allowed to leave abandoned ship after four years

A random Syrian, or someone 'without passport' is not going to raise any scrutiny in Egypt. Just a few handfulls of cash could have expedited his way to at least Lebanon.

There's something odd about this story because neither a passport nor money should have kept him there, unless there was literally some kind of watch for him, and/or the cash situation was really that extremely dire. That said, he was able to survive for 4 years so money had to be coming from somewhere.

I suggest that he was maybe being paid a tiny amount, and that he felt it'd be better to 'stick it out' as a nearly worthless cog, than to take a risky path home to what might be nothing anyhow.

Is there something that could be done by people otherwise uninvolved - like myself, or my fellow HN readers - to help the other ~250 people who are currently stuck in similar situations?

I don’t even know how to go about enumerating who those people are, their ships, or where they are anchored. With that information a well-organized and/or funded group could at least get someone out to these people to check on them, provide basic supplies, and perhaps some form of reliable communications.

A lot of problems seem insurmountable large and complex, and even this one seems so if your goal is to free these people of their legal liabilities - but if you set aside trying to solve the reason they’re stuck onboard these ships in the first place, providing basic humanitarian aid to them seems doable.

ETA: This looks like a good place to start - https://www.ilo.org/dyn/seafarers/seafarersbrowse.home

I'm curious, if he did manage to get on a ship surely he'd be able to return home to Syria on a ship bound there?

I mean, if you're an American citizen heading home and you lose your passport on the walkway to board your plane in France... it's not like America's going to prevent you from entering, right?

Surely it's gonna take some time to verify who you are and fix the situation. But it's not like you're forever banned from your own country.

Leaving Egypt might have been too difficult logistically to pull off, but once he had I don't see any legal difficulty returning home.

Alternatively - if you're not in the Eygptian legal system - be careful of trying to make someone sign something they don't comprehend - in the US at best the contract will be invalidated and at worst you might be held responsible for any damages if it was your job to clearly communicate the rights the parties had w.r.t. the contract before signing.

That all said - that's a hard battle and one you're probably not going to win unless you a) don't be speak english or b) don't have full control of your mental faculties - "I couldn't be arsed to read the contract" is generally not a defense unless the contract goes out of its way to be intentionally misleading.

Folks - this is what we are outsourcing and externalizing.

When foreign entities are able to bid for a lot less, and pay a lot less, a lot of it has to do with the fact that they will not bother with 'end of life' for ships, or getting insurance, or worrying about the lives of people who are 'expendable'.

Those very nice buildings in Dubai come from some nasty labour practices.

If every piece of this puzzle from end-to-end were to have happened in a 'rich country' there'd be legal issues, PR/media, litigation, and a separate kind of bureaucracy altogether, meaning the 'alternative' for a lot of corporations is just 'wash their hands' of it, pay 1/2 the price, and get all the ugly parts 'off the books'.

We are to the point now where we have ample material surplus - we don't need any more 'plastic stuff from China' - it'd be worthwhile to start integrating a lot of 'off the books' stuff into trade deals. Ironically, it would be good for 'them' as well, because in chaotic, quasi-lawless systems it doesn't make sense for participants to invest in anything further ahead than what is in front of their noses (i.e. don't hate the Lebanese shippers for doing the only thing they can do to remain profitable, i.e. don't hate the player, hate the game) ... forcing some degree of transparency and accountability in these systems might raise prices a little bit, but the benefits would likely be immensely positive in the system overall.

It's nice that the story is made personal, about a real individual (think: that Tom Hanks film about someone stuck in international airport limbo) but that's not really the story here is it.