Dr. Rakesh Ranjan

South Asia Regional Coordinator at Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB)

Speaker

Dr Rakesh Ranjan is a sociologist and labour-migration specialist whose work bridges labour mobility, business, and global supply chains. He serves as the South Asia Regional Coordinator for the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB), supporting the organisation’s Shipping and Migrant Workers Programmes. His work centres on advancing responsible recruitment, ethical business conduct, and the protection and dignity of workers and seafarers who sustain global trade.

At IHRB, Dr Ranjan leads regional engagement with shipping companies, crewing agencies, civil-society organisations, and governments to embed the Employer Pays Principle (EPP) within maritime recruitment systems. His efforts focus on identifying and addressing recruitment-related costs borne by seafarers, and helping the industry transition to fair, no-fee recruitment models of policy and practice.

In the current two-year plan, Dr Ranjan is supporting IHRB’s strategic initiatives aimed at achieving fee-free recruitment across the entire maritime supply chain. IHRB’s work involves engagement with all shipping stakeholders – including government, shipowners and managers, charterers and container cargo owners as well as civil society – to work collectively towards this common goal. Dr. Ranjan provides support to IHRB’s global action group against seafarer recruitment fees, which comprises 32 of these key maritime stakeholders, advocating internally and through IHRB to the industry at large for due diligence on recruitment fees, and wider crew welfare,

Dr. Ranjan specifically focuses on India and the Philippines through targeted research, government engagement, multi-stakeholder dialogue, and awareness-building for seafarers, crewing agencies and businesses.

A major contribution of his work is the creation of the Responsible Recruitment Register, a pioneering global platform that documents and monitors company and industry commitments to responsible recruitment. The Register consolidates data from more than 1,500 companies and 100 industry associations, mapping progress towards fee-free recruitment and providing a transparent evidence base. This register is currently being expanded to include responsible crewing agencies and shipping companies.

Dr Ranjan holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, with advanced research training at the European University Institute (Italy) and the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Indian Diaspora Homeland Engagement: Education and Healthcare Sector (Oxford University Press) and serves as a Visiting Senior Fellow at both the Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism and the International Institute for Migration and Development.