Ships are changing their flag registry much more often than they used to. Much of this is because the older ships are gravitating to the ‘dark’ or ‘shadow’ fleet, which specializes in avoiding sanctions.
Many of these newly popular flag states have few regulations and little power to provide oversight on the registered ships. That’s what some ship operators want.
In addition, changing flags frequently circumvents enforcement by anyone. The law of the sea is that each ship is nominally required to enforce the laws of its flag state. But some of the flag states have no relevant laws, or very weak ones, and provide no means of enforcement. And jumping flags means that even if some enforcement is tried, it will likely not apply to the vessel by the time the complaint is heard.
African states are frequent choices of shipowners who choose to use alternate flagging. Aside from Liberia, a major flag state, which has a robust governance, many African states use flagging as a revenue source with no actions required. This threatens safety, environmental disaster, and seafarer welfare. The chart below from Clarkson’s, obtained from the article linked below, shows how changes in African registry have ramped up.
The flag-jumping is connected to the fracture in the shipping world between those operators aligned with the EU, US and the West, and those aligned with Russia, to some extent China, and other sanctioned states such as Iran. It’s likely to continue as long as the fracture intensifies.
Management of shipping, safety on board and in port, and welfare of seafarers, is taking a back seat in the meantime.
Sam Chambers October 23, 2025
