Legal Deliberations at the IMO
Seafarer abandonment, criminalisation and unlawful registration were among key topics on which the IMO’s Legal Committee focussed last week.
With 312 separate cases of seafarer abandonment reported in 2024 by the International Transport Workers Federation, the increasing trend of abandonment is causing international alarm. From 109 cases in 2022, through 142 cases in 2023, the graph of abandonment is on a firmly upward trajectory. The Committee kick-started further work by a joint IMO-ILO Task Force to update the database, accompanied by calls for strengthening national legal enforcement mechanisms to prevent and also to deal with abandonment. The declaration by Namibia that they plan to accede to the Maritime Labour Convention was thus especially well received.
The Committee agreed to adopt new guidelines on fair treatment of seafarers detained in connection with alleged crimes, agreed between the IMO and the International Labour Organization. These guidelines set out minimum standards of permitted communication, sufficiency of evidence, legal process and the responsibilities of Flag State as well as ship owners. The resolution which adopted the guidelines invited all IMO members states to implement them accordingly.
Fraudulent ship registration received close examination, with the agenda focussing on proposed IMO guidelines setting out the ‘due diligence’ expected of a Flag State prior to accepting a new ship onto their registry. The IMO Secretariat listed 185 ships currently regarded as having a ‘false flag’. In a separate document, France and The Netherlands provided information to the committee related to the setting up of false registries purporting to be in Sint Maarten and Matthew Island. Whilst noting that it is not possible to regulate away all fraud, due to the fact that fraudsters are, by definition, not interested in complying with the law, the outcome of these deliberations was agreement to develop the proposed guidelines at the next meeting of this Committee.
The Nautical Institute was represented by Captain Chris O’Flaherty AFNI.