When President Prabowo Subianto stood before Indonesia's trade union leaders at the 2025 International Labor Day commemoration in Jakarta and committed to ratifying ILO Convention 188 on Work in Fishing, advocates who'd spent more than a decade pushing for this moment finally had something to celebrate. The answer to their years of waiting had arrived — and this time, it wasn't Godot.
Now, approaching the one-year anniversary of that pledge, the momentum is building. In late September 2025, the Manpower Ministry convened a high-level tripartite meeting on the fishing sector, bringing together the manpower minister, senior officials from relevant ministries, trade union leaders, NGO representatives, and employers. Together, they publicly reaffirmed Indonesia's commitment and announced something concrete: a 2026 ratification timeframe.
The stakes could not be higher. A 2024 ILO-BRIN study, "Understanding Working Conditions of Fishers in Indonesia," estimates that 2.36 million people were employed in capture marine fishing in 2021 — roughly 1.3 percent of the working population. The survey uncovered serious systemic problems regarding recruitment, employment contracts, rest hours, social security, and occupational safety. For the fishers themselves — people like Susilo from Tegal in Central Java, who works aboard foreign vessels, or Badu, who fishes closer to home — ratification could mean the difference between dangerous, exploitative conditions and genuine protections.
For Indonesian migrant fishers, the situation has been especially precarious. According to the Indonesian Migrant Workers Protection Ministry (KP2MI), more than 32,000 Indonesian migrant fishers were placed under the "P-to-P" scheme between 2011 and 2025. The true number may be double or triple that figure — the Transportation Ministry maintains separate records that have never been synchronized with KP2MI's data. Without accurate numbers, protections remain nearly impossible to enforce.
Economic realities are adding pressure from an unexpected direction. According to the Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry, Indonesia earned US$5.07 billion from fishery exports in October 2025 alone, with the United States, China, Japan, and the European Union as primary markets. The Indonesia-EU Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IEU-CEPA), signed in September 2025, lists fisheries as a beneficiary sector but embeds labor standards as a condition of trade. International buyers in the EU and North America are increasingly scrutinizing social conditions within their supply chains — making ratification not just a human rights priority, but an economic imperative.
Some concerns about cost have slowed progress, but advocates point to a crucial detail in the Convention itself: a "grandfather clause" that exempts existing vessels from expensive upgrades to accommodation standards. Under Annex III, detailed requirements apply only to new vessels whose keels are laid after the ratification date — meaning small and medium operators face a far lighter burden than feared.
The path to 2026 is now clear. With government ministries, unions, and employers aligned, Indonesia stands at the threshold of becoming a regional leader in fisher protections — proving that sometimes, after a very long wait, the thing you're hoping for actually arrives.