University of Georgia School of Law Professor Desirée LeClercq recently published an article, “Gender-Based Violence at Sea,” in the Cornell International Law Journal. The article stems from LeClercq’s previous contribution to Cornell’s Transnational Labor Law Conference as a conference co-organizer.

LeClercq’s article highlights the pervasive gender-based violence and harassment that female seafarers endure at sea. Furthermore, LeClercq argues the International Labour Organization (ILO) has failed to properly protect workers despite the protections intended by the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006.

Below is an abstract from the article:

“This Symposium contribution assesses the ability of international law to evolve to offer essential protections for workers in an increasingly globalized world. It focuses on protections for women seafarers, specifically around gender-based violence and harassment on board vessels. Even though it is the world’s oldest transnational sector, seafaring remains overwhelmingly male-dominated. Consequently, international law was not initially conceived with women seafarers in mind. Now that women have broken into the maritime profession, they count on international law to evolve in kind. Notwithstanding, they continue to face sexist, if not violent, workplaces, and report high incidents of gender-based violence and harassment at sea.

The international organization responsible for adopting and supervising protections for workers, the International Labour Organization (ILO), has long prioritized the special needs of seafarers. Its Maritime Labor Convention, 2006, promised to ensure holistic protections for all women and men at sea and to quickly adapt with evolving sectoral challenges. A close look at the prevalence of gender-based violence and harassment at sea shows, however, that the ILO’s bureaucratic pathologies and interinstitutional processes preclude it from accomplishing that mission. The ILO’s failure to quickly respond to mounting evidence of that violence and harassment has broad implications for international law, which must absorb and respond to transnational work’s dynamic and fluctuating demands to remain useful and relevant.”

LeClercq joined the University of Georgia School of Law in 2024 as an assistant professor. She teaches International Trade and Workers Rights, International Labor Law, International Law and U.S. Labor Law. This semester, LeClercq is overseeing the International Law Colloquium, a for-credit course designed to introduce students to international economic law through engagement with scholars in the international legal field. She also serves as a faculty co-director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center and as the faculty adviser for the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law.