IMO currently boasts over 170 Member States. IMO’s governing body is the Assembly, which is made up of all the Member States and meets normally once every two years. It adopts the budget for the next biennium together with technical resolutions and recommendations prepared by subsidiary bodies during the previous two years. The Council of 40 Member States elected by the Assembly acts as governing body in between Assembly sessions. It prepares the budget and work programme for the Assembly. The main technical work is carried out by the Maritime Safety, Marine Environment Protection, Legal, Technical Co-operation and Facilitation Committees and a number of sub-committees.
Mr. William Graham (United Kingdom) served as Secretary-General from 1961 to 1963 (seen here with the IMCO Librarian, Miss Armstrong)
Mr. Ove Nielsen (Denmark), the first Secretary-General from 1959 to 1961
To mark this auspicious occasion and celebration, IIMS Chief Executive Officer, Mike Schwarz, poses the questions as IMO speaks exclusively to The Report Magazine.
Q 1. Congratulations on reaching the milestone of your 70th birthday as an organisation. Looking back in time what were the contributing factors seventy years ago that led to the coming together of nations and the Convention being established?
A. It has long been recognized that the best way to improve safety at sea is by developing international regulations that are followed by all shipping nations. From the mid- 19th century onwards a number of such treaties were adopted. Several countries proposed that a permanent international body should be established to promote maritime safety more effectively, but it was not until
32 | The Report • March 2018 • Issue 83
the establishment of the United Nations itself that these hopes were realized.
In 1946, the Economic and Social Council of the newly established United Nations adopted a resolution creating a Temporary Transport and Communications Commission. This Commission advised that an international organisation should be established to deal with technical matters in shipping.
To determine what format should be adopted for this new body an international conference was held in Geneva between February 19 and March 6, 1948. The United Nations Maritime Conference,
as it was called, was held at the invitation of the United Nations Economic and Social Council and concluded with the drafting of a convention establishing the Inter-governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (or IMCO as it would become known as) and adopted a draft agreement on relationships with the UN. It also established a Preparatory Committee to serve as an interim body for making preparation for the first Assembly.
This first conference was attended by representatives from 32 Governments together with four observers.
It took a further ten years for the convention to receive sufficient ratification to enter force, but this milestone was achieved in 1958. The first meeting of the Organization therefore took place in January 1959.
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