Recently, the migration of refugees has been drastically increasing and became a global issue which indirectly affects the shipmasters, authorities and shipowners during rescue operations. The objective of this paper is to study the challenges or difficulties in rescuing refugees at sea from the perspectives of shipmasters, authorities and shipowners in Malaysia. In this study, the key challenges faced by these three groups of individuals are collected and classified based on the primary data reviewed. The interview sessions were conducted with selected expertise and the data collected are analyzed based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) or precisely the pair-wise comparison methods. Through the calculations, the challenges are ranked from the most important challenges to the least important challenges. Furthermore, the data is analyzed by using expert judgments focusing on the relatively most important challenges faced by the three groups of individuals. Finally, the most important challenge faced by shipmasters is the safety of ships and crews, while for authorities, the most important challenge faced is delays in the initiation of rescue operations. For ship-owners, the most important challenge faced is time sensitive cargo loss. Ultimately, two suggestions have been proposed to encounter the most important challenge faced by these groups.

Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
    2.1. Challenges Faced By Shipmasters When RescuingRefugees at Sea
    2.2. Challenges Faced By Authorities in RescuingRefugees at Sea
    2.3. Challenges Faced By Shipowners in RescuingRefugees at Sea
3. Methodology
    3.1. Research Design
    3.2. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)
    3.3. Pair-Wise Comparison
    3.4. Data Collection Process
4. Results and Discussions
    4.1. Process
    4.2. Data analysis process
5. Conclusions
    5.1. Recommendation
    5.2. Limitations of research
    5.3. Future work
    5.4. Conclusion
Reference

• Malvindran RAVIE(Dept. of Nautical Science and Maritime Transports, School of Ocean Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu)
• Mohd Hafizi SAID(Dept. of Nautical Science and Maritime Transports, School of Ocean Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu)
• Noorul Shaiful Fitri ABDUL RAHMAN(Dept. of Maritime Management, School of Maritime Business and Management, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu) Corresponding Author
• Syed Faizal Shah SYED JOHARI SHAH(Dept. of Maritime Management, School of Maritime Business and Management, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu)