Creating an Inclusive Culture: Seafarers

• Allies centre and include those who are otherwise silenced or marginalised.
• Allies seek to understand how others face oppression.
• Allies relate to others by listening to them and believing in their experiences.
• Allyship is about action — it is something you do, not something you are.

• Allies do not expect others to show them what it is like to be oppressed.
• Allies do not relate to others by explaining how they, too, have faced injustice — that centres the ally instead of the person affected.
• Allies do not focus on the pain they feel in response to someone else's oppression.
• Allyship is not about status.

The pattern is simple: listen, believe, learn, and act. An ally learns from the people affected rather than asking them to educate or perform their experience, and turns understanding into behaviour that includes and protects others.

• Allyship = action, not status.
• Ally: centres and includes the marginalised; seeks to understand their oppression; listens and believes.
• Ally does not: expect others to demonstrate oppression; compete with their own story of injustice; focus on their own pain.
• Understanding comes from the people affected — then it is turned into action.

1. Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 (as amended) — provisions on the elimination of harassment and bullying and on a safe and respectful working environment.