Q 2. What are the key challenges for IMO to consider to ensure it remains fit and relevant for the next 70 years in a rapidly changing marine industry?
A. Last year IMO adopted a new strategic plan for the six year period 2018 to 2023. Part of this was a mission statement, which confirms that IMO will “promote safe, secure, environmentally sound, efficient and sustainable shipping through cooperation”, and a supporting vision statement which says IMO will “uphold its leadership role as the global regulator of shipping”.
More specifically, the plan enshrined seven specific strategic directions, namely: improve implementation, integrate new and advancing technologies in the regulatory framework, respond to climate change, engage in ocean governance, enhance global facilitation and security of international trade, ensure regulatory effectiveness, and ensure organizational effectiveness.
The seven strategic directions are paramount but the Organization’s strategic plan also refers to a number of other vital areas that will underlie its work in the coming period. These include the needs of developing countries, especially those of small island developing States and least developed countries, the competence and professionalism of personnel employed or engaged in the maritime sector, the needs and wellbeing of seafarers, the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women, achieving the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals and collaboration with other bodies in the United Nations system.
Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, comes to Albert Embankment to officially open the building in 1982.
The Report • March 2018 • Issue 83 | 33
Q 3. Like most bodies of its type and partly because of its committee-based structure, IMO cannot respond in a flash to effect changes. How much of a hindrance and frustration can this be?
A. The structure of IMO ensures that all member states are equal when it comes to developing, adopting and amending measures. Each member has a single vote and none of these has any additional weight. The aim at IMO is to adopt measures by consensus. Consensus may take time to be established, but it has the advantage that measures adopted in this way
1959 IMO Assembly
have a far better chance of widespread implementation that those adopted by a vote. Another advantage of IMO’s structure is that it avoids the possibility of “knee jerk” reactions, which experience suggests do not always prove to be the best. And when it needs to, IMO can respond very quickly to events. Perhaps the most striking example of this came after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. In November 2001 the IMO Assembly adopted a resolution to review measures and procedures to prevent acts of terrorism against ships; during 2002, IMO convened an extraordinary session of the Maritime Safety Committee and two working groups on maritime security as well as two full meetings of the Committee itself. All this activity meant that a Diplomatic Conference was able to adopt several new measures, including the comprehensive International Ship and Port Facility Security Code, in December 2002 – a little over a year after the dreadful incident which triggered them.
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