The introductory chapter provides an overview of human rights issues and highlights the importance of a civil liability framework for the shipbreaking industry. Shipbreaking is an essential industry practice for the global maritime industry because it involves resolving its overcapacity problem in merchant fleets. However, workplace deaths, injuries, and diseases are the main downsides of the shipbreaking industry. The reason is that international shipowners earn millions of dollars from selling ships to South Asia. But they can escape responsibility for both paying compensation and ensuring safe working conditions through an opaque transfer process, by which a ship is taken out of service and sold for breaking without exposing the chain of ownership from cradle to grave. The involvement of shipowners in the transfer process but the absence of an international mechanism to address the issue of providing adequate compensation to harmed workers signifies flaws and injustices in the governance structure of the shipbreaking and maritime industries.