To: [Name], [Chief Executive / Chair / Harbour Master], [Port of ___ Authority]
Cc: [Mayor of ___ / Minister of Transport / Port Commissioner, as relevant]

Re: The dockworkers' strike of 30 October. Our port must not serve war and genocide

Dear [Name],

We are [organisations / residents / trade unionists / community members] of [city/region]. We are writing ahead of the coordinated dockworkers' strike across Mediterranean ports on 30 October, and in solidarity with the workers taking part in it.

Dockworkers are refusing to handle weapons, military equipment and military-related cargo bound for the genocide in Gaza. They are doing what our institutions have refused to do: acting on the evidence in front of them and on the law that binds all of us. We support them without reservation.

Between August 2025 and September 2026, No Harbour for Genocide has tracked 315 shipments of components for Elbit Systems, Israel's largest arms manufacturer, moving through 56 commercial ports, in 29 countries. Between December 2025 and September 2026, No Harbour for Genocide also tracked 3,400 shipments of cargo supplying US military bases through 67 ports in 42 countries. Your port is named as one of them. [Delete this paragraph if your port is not listed there.]

Our ports are not military bases. Nobody in our communities asked for them to be militarised, and nobody asked for the policing of the workers and residents who object. We do not accept either. A port moves the goods people live on. It should not be a staging ground for war, and we do not want military equipment coming through ours. Nor do we want port staff and dockworkers put in the position of handling cargo that may make them complicit in war crimes.

War is making us poorer. Across [country/region], people are living through a cost of living crisis. Rent is out of reach. Energy bills decide whether a family eats or stays warm. Schools and hospitals go without. Meanwhile billions go to weapons, to war, and to the companies that profit from both. Every euro spent arming a war is a euro taken from the homes, wages and services of ordinary people here. War and profit have been put ahead of what people need, and our ports have been made to serve that order of priorities. We reject it, and we ask you to reject it too.

You have the means to act, and you have the duty. Port and coastal states are not bystanders under international law. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and other binding instruments oblige them to stop their ports and waters being used to transfer military materiel and dual-use goods to states committing genocide, apartheid or other serious violations. ASCOMARE and Law for Palestine, at the request of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, have prepared operational guidelines and a due diligence template for port authorities that set out exactly how to do this: cargo risk assessment, requests for information, inspection, and refusal of docking where complicity is established. It is available here:

https://law4palestine.org/how-to-implement-obligations-under-the-law-of-the-sea-to-prevent-illegal-maritime-transfers-to-israel/

We therefore ask [Port of ___ Authority] to:

1. Adopt the ASCOMARE / Law for Palestine operational due diligence template and apply it to every vessel and cargo calling at [___], starting with military, weapons-component and dual-use cargo;

2. Inspect any vessel or cargo identified as carrying military materiel or dual-use goods bound for use in violations of international law, withhold its clearance, and deny docking where complicity is established;

3. Publish the steps the authority takes, so that the people of [city] can see for themselves that their port does not serve war;

4. Meet dockworkers and their unions, hear their demands, and give a commitment that no worker will be disciplined, penalised or pressured for refusing to handle military or complicit cargo;

5. Refuse any further militarisation of [___ port]: no expansion of weapons-handling infrastructure, no naval preparations for war deployments, and no use of the port as a logistics hub for war.

On 30 October, dockworkers across the Mediterranean will refuse to let our ports and our societies be put at the service of war. We stand with them. We ask the authority that governs our port to stand with them too, and to do it through the legal and operational measures already within its power.

Sincerely,

[Organisation / coalition name]
[Contact name and role]
[Email / phone]
[On behalf of the undersigned organisations: ___]