On 1 January 2026, a single line changed in the training code for seafarers — and with it, the way the maritime industry handles a subject long confined to crew-mess conversations. Since that date, preventing and responding to violence and harassment on board — sexual harassment, bullying and sexual assault included — is a mandatory STCW competence. It is no longer a matter of company culture or a captain’s goodwill: it is a certification requirement, as auditable as firefighting or sea survival.
For yachting, none of this is abstract. No workplace concentrates as many risk factors as a superyacht.
What STCW has required since January 2026
Approved by the IMO in May 2024, the amendments to the STCW Code entered into force on 1 January 2026. They introduce a new minimum standard of competence within the PSSR module (Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities) — the safety foundation every seafarer holds through Basic Training.
In practice, training must now cover an understanding of violence and harassment — including sexual harassment, bullying and sexual assault — the so-called continuum of harm, the consequences for victims, perpetrators, bystanders and other stakeholders, and the effects on safety, health and wellbeing on board.
The new competence applies to certificates issued and renewed alike. The precise timetable, however, rests with each flag administration: some require the new content for any Basic Training completed after 1 January 2026; others let existing certificates run until revalidation. For a manager, the consequence is immediate — you need to know, crew member by crew member, who holds the updated version and who must return to the classroom.
MLC 2006 closes the loop
STCW addresses individual competence. The Maritime Labour Convention tackles the systemic obligation. Meeting for its 113th session on 6 June 2025, the International Labour Conference adopted a set of amendments to MLC 2006, expected to enter into force on 23 December 2027.
The text now explicitly prohibits violence, harassment, sexual harassment, bullying and assault on board — where earlier versions stayed vague. It requires shipowners to adopt preventive policies and to put safe, effective reporting mechanisms in place. Flag-state responsibilities (Regulation 5.1) are reinforced: confidentiality of complaint procedures, protection against retaliation, and safeguards against malicious or vexatious complaints.
Two halves of the same movement, in other words: STCW trains the individual, MLC structures the organisation. A yacht that merely sends its crew on a course, with no written policy and no reporting channel, will be only half compliant.
Why yachts are on the front line
Five to thirty people living and working together around the clock, in a closed space, for months. A short, tight hierarchy. A crew that is often young and seasonal. The owner and guests aboard, sometimes alcohol, and a blurred line between service and private life. The superyacht concentrates the conditions for harassment better than any other vessel — and remains one of the environments where incidents are least reported, precisely for want of an “elsewhere” to turn to.
The best-run programmes, demanding flags and charter clients already expected documented policies. The new rules simply make visible those who had none.
What the manager needs to put in place
Compliance comes down to a handful of concrete workstreams:
- Audit the training matrix: identify who must revalidate their Basic Training, by when, and budget the time and cost of the courses.
- Write a policy — an anti-harassment policy and code of conduct, embedded in the vessel’s safety management system (SMS).
- Open a confidential reporting channel with a route ashore — the DPA serving as a neutral point of contact, off the ship’s chain of command.
- Define a protocol for investigation and protection against retaliation.
- Brief the captain and heads of department, and fold the subject into every new joiner’s induction.
- Keep the evidence: training certificates, signed policy acknowledgements, drill records.
The 2027 MLC deadline looks distant, but the training is already mandatory — and building a credible policy, with a reporting channel crew actually trust, takes at least a season. Starting now is as much about compliance as it is about crew retention and the vessel’s reputation. For a yacht run by a family office or with an outsourced DPA, this is exactly the kind of structural obligation that belongs with the ship manager.