The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and the Comité Maritime International (CMI) have recently launched an updated campaign to get governments to ratify urgent maritime treaties.
CMI’s president, Ann Fenech, argues that today’s challenging international scene and geopolitical developments make it all the more important, now more than ever before, that the maritime law and regulations in different jurisdictions provide legal certainty and uniformity.
The CMI was established in 1897 and is made up of 53 national maritime law associations and numerous industry players as consultative members. It has since its creation been responsible for drafting the vast majority of maritime law conventions.
Fenech, a partner in Malta-based Fenech & Fenech Advocates, is a big believer in the primacy of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as the industry’s global regulator, a position that has come under considerable pressure in recent years with Europe going its own way on green legislation and the return of Donald Trump to power in the US.
“We are very strong supporters of the world maritime order needing a global regulator,” Fenech tells Maritime CEO. The maritime industry is by its very nature international and therefore my own personal view is that, notwithstanding the good and honourable intentions one cannot expect regional regulators to be able to give effect to what is required to be adopted on an international level.”
Regional regulations tend to result in the problem shifting from one region to the other, Fenech reckons.
“For there to be a true level playing field, to achieve the highest possible standards on a worldwide basis maritime regulation needs to be global and the IMO as well as other UN agencies tick the boxes,” she says.
Getting maritime treaties ratified in 2025 is not easy, Fenech concedes.
“The decision by any state to ratify a convention meaning that what is in effect an international instrument becomes part and parcel of the law of the land is to some extent dependant on how enthusiastic that particular state was during the deliberation of the convention prior to it being adopted,” she explains.
The latest CMI draft which went on to be adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations and signed in Beijing in September of 2023, the convention on the international effects of judicial sales of ships, was deliberated intently by dozens of state delegations and in following 18 months CMI has achieved 32 signatories.
“We are cautiously optimistic that the convention will be ratified during 2025,” Fenech says. “One of the reasons behind the success of this convention is that the convention does not attempt to disrupt the order of domestic law. It simply sets down the basic, most important principles and that I believe has made it easier for most jurisdictions to adopt it.”
Other international maritime conventions strongly encouraged to be ratified by governments by ICS and CMI as an urgent priority are the IMO Nairobi Convention on the Removal of Wrecks (Nairobi WRC), 2007, IMO 2010 Protocol to the International Convention on Liability and Compensation for Damage in Connection with the Carriage of Hazardous and Noxious Substances by Sea (HNS), 1996, the IMO Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (Hong Kong), 2009.
