Transportation Press Releases

IMO Convention Adopted 60 Years Ago—03/06/2008

March 6 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the international convention that established the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

The setting for this historic event was a conference held in Geneva, under the auspices of the United Nations. The IMO Convention subsequently entered into force in 1958, and the new Organization met for the first time the following year.

Commenting on the Organization's 60th anniversary, IMO Secretary-General Efthimios E. Mitropoulos, recalled that the IMO Council had decided, in June 2007, that the theme for this year's World Maritime Day would be “IMO: 60 years in the service of shipping,” which, he said, would provide an opportunity “to pay due tribute to the sterling work the Organization has been delivering since its inception in 1948 as a specialized agency of the United Nations; as an institution serving the common public good; and as the regulator and partner of an industry, which, while credited with carrying the overwhelming volume of world trade safely and efficiently, also displays a caring attitude vis-à-vis the environment, both marine and atmospheric.”

IMO was established out of a long-standing recognition that the best way of improving safety at sea was by developing international regulations that could be implemented by all nations with an interest in maritime transportation. Indeed, from the mid-19th century onwards, a number of treaties covering various aspects of maritime safety were adopted. There had been earlier attempts to establish a permanent international body to deal with shipping, similar to those that had already been established, for example, to regulate international telecommunication services (ITU, established in 1865) and postal services (UPU, established in 1874). In the event, no agreement on a similar maritime body was reached, chiefly due to the concerns of some countries and industry organizations that it might seek to regulate aspects of shipping that were considered more suitable for regulation by national Governments or through commercial arrangements.

However, by the end of the Second World War, many Governments had become convinced of the need for greater international co-operation. The United Nations was established, by universal agreement, as a forum for promoting political understanding. At the same time, a number of specialized agencies, which were then already in existence and had been set up to deal with specific subjects, were brought within the framework of the United Nations.

It was against this background that, in 1948, a conference was convened by the United Nations in Geneva to consider the establishment of a new Organization to deal with international shipping, and especially shipping safety. That conference ended on 6 March 1948 with the successful adoption of the Convention establishing the new Organization. (While it was originally called the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO), the name was changed to the International Maritime Organization in 1982, to reflect its evolving role as a regulatory body.)

However, continuing apprehension in some sections of the industry about the role of an international shipping organization meant that it took ten years for sufficient countries to accept the Convention and for it to meet its entry-into-force requirements. Eventually, the new Organization commenced operations in January 1959.

When it did so, its functions had been amplified from those originally envisaged in the 1948 Convention as a result of developments in the maritime world. Marine pollution from ships, especially oil pollution associated with tankers, had emerged as a growing threat during the 1950s and an international conference, convened by the United Kingdom Government in 1954, had adopted a Convention setting forth international regulations for preventing pollution of the seas from oils carried by ships. The conference agreed that IMO should assume responsibility for the administration of the new Convention once it began operations.

From the start, therefore, IMO has been primarily a technical Organization, with maritime safety and security, pollution prevention and facilitation of maritime traffic being its greatest priorities. These objectives are epitomized in its mission statement “Safe, Secure and Efficient Shipping on Clean Oceans.”

When the IMO Convention entered into force in 1958, the Organization had 21 Member States. Its membership has now risen to 167 Member States and three Associate Members, which includes virtually all the nations of the world with an interest in maritime affairs, be they involved in the shipping industry or coastal states with an interest in protecting their maritime environment.

In addition, a number of inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations, representing a wide variety of interests, ranging from industry sectors to environmental groups, enjoy consultative status with the Organization. Their input, over many years, into the process of developing and refining international standards for shipping has been, and continues to be, of great value.

Today, IMO remains one of the smallest UN agencies, headquartered in London, with a total of around 340 staff in the Secretariat. The detailed technical work of the Organization is carried out by a series of committees and sub-committees, to which the Member States send their experts, as appropriate. The titles of the committees clearly reflect their areas of expertise and responsibility, namely, the Maritime Safety Committee, the Legal Committee, the Marine Environment Protection Committee, the Technical Co-operation Committee and the Facilitation Committee. The latter organ will become formally institutionalized when the 1991 amendments to the IMO Convention enter into force on 7 December 2008.

The direct output of IMO's regulatory work is a comprehensive body of international conventions. Today there are 50 such IMO treaty instruments, supported by literally hundreds of other measures such as protocols, codes, guidelines, recommended practices and so on. Between them, they influence almost every aspect of shipping and ship operation, including ship design, construction, equipment, maintenance, manning and eventual disposal - literally, from the drawing board to the scrapyard.

The year 2008 contains a number of key milestones and anniversaries for the Organization. In addition to the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the IMO Convention, March 17th will mark the 50th anniversary of that Convention entering into force in 1958; and June will see the 100th meeting of the IMO Council, the executive organ of the Organization, which is responsible, under the IMO Assembly, for supervising the work of the Organization between sessions of the latter. These occasions, along with the Organization's return to its refurbished Headquarters building on London's Albert Embankment, will be celebrated in a series of events coinciding with the week-long 100th session of the Council, from 16 to 20 June.

International Maritime Organization . "IMO Convention adopted 60 years ago." [http://www.imo.org/]. 03/06/2008.