This was a shorter five-day meeting of the Committee again limited to 3 hours a day using the KUDO platform. The Chair was Mrs Mayte Medina of the USA and there was a very heavy workload with 154 input papers. The result was that there was insufficient time to consider much of the agenda.

Priority had to be given to preparing for the upcoming Assembly meeting and draft resolutions prepared at the last meeting were completed on “Prevention of and suppression of piracy, armed robbery against ships and illicit maritime activity in the Gulf of Guinea” and “Comprehensive action to address seafarer’s challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic”. Both topics were of great concern to the Committee and a further resolution was prepared on “Guidance on seafarers’ training and certification for issuing Administrations, flag states and port states during the COCID-19 pandemic”.

Domestic ferry safety was a further important topic for the meeting and this resulted in the drafting of draft model regulations.

The output from the last meeting of the Sub-committee on Navigation, Communications, Search and Rescue (NCSR8) concerning the revision of Chapter IV (Radiocommunications) of the International Convention on the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and associated documents was all accepted. This will now go forward to the next meeting for adoption with an intended entry into force of 2024. A revision of the Iridium SafetyCast service manual was also agreed.

There was not time to consider proposals for new work items with the exception of two which were considered to be of priority, these being guidance on assessments and applications of remote surveys and audits, and development of a goal based instrument for maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS).

In conclusion the Chair requested to have two full eight-day meetings next year and said that no further proposals for new work would be accepted until the existing backlog had been cleared.


The next meeting has been scheduled for 20 to 29 April 2022 and a further meeting is expected in November. The next meeting of NCSR is scheduled for 20 June to 1 August 2022.