Note of meeting of the International Maritime Organization Maritime Safety Committee IMO MSC107 – 31 May to 9 June 2023

This was a full length eight-day meeting of the Committee as, being Assembly year, it will be the only meeting this year. It was very well attended with 1300 delegates registered and chaired by Mrs Mayte Medina of the USA. It was the first meeting since the pandemic that there were no left-over documents from previous meetings but had attracted 122 submissions including 22 proposals for new work.

Concerns were raised about unannounced missile launches by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea which were creating a threat to international shipping when debris fell into the sea. This resulted in a new resolution being drafted on Strengthening measures for ensuring the safety of international shipping.

Concerns were also raised about the Russian Federation issuing seafarers certificates from ports in Ukraine where the Ukrainian administration was unable to operate. There was doubt about the validity of these certificates and Member States were encouraged to prevent such unlawful practices by the Russian Federation.

Work continued on Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) towards developing a voluntary MASS Code for cargo ships. The Correspondence Group reported on its work and a meeting of a Joint MSC/LEG/FAL working group incorporating the Legal and Facilitation Committees and a meeting of a Intersessional working group reported. A new draft of the Code was prepared and work will continue in the Correspondence Group and the Intersessional working group. The Joint working group will meet after next year’s meetings of the Legal and Facilitation Committees.

Draft amendments to Chapter V (Safety of Navigation) of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) were approved with regard to reporting the loss of containers at sea.

The urgent issues from the meeting of the sub-committee on Navigation, Communications, Search and Rescue (NCSR) which had taken place two weeks previously were agreed particularly the revised date of 1 January 2028 for installations of new radio equipment which will now be promulgated in a Circular.

After considerable discussion new work was agreed on development of a safety regulatory framework to support the reduction of GHG emissions from ships using new technologies and alternative fuels and a correspondence group was set up to be coordinated by the USA. Further new work items were agreed for; a revision of the guidelines on cyber risk management (MSC.FAL.1/Circ3), development of guidelines for software maintenance, development of guidelines for EPIRBs two-way communication, development of measures to prevent loss of containers at sea, revision of performance standards for gyro compasses, revision of the IMO standard communication phrases (SMCP), revision of performance standards for BeiDou satellite navigation system, development of performance standards for satellite-based augmentation systems and identification of measures to improve the security and integrity aspects of the Automatic Identification System (AIS). The Committee agreed that with this workload there should be a moratorium on submissions of proposals for new work at the next meeting.

The meeting noted the recent death of Dr Jim Coley who was the representative of Vanuatu for many years in the 1990s. The meeting bade farewell to the Secretary-General, Kitok Lim, whose 8 year term ends this year and Fred Kenney the Director of the Legal Affairs and External Relations Division who is retiring.

The next meeting has been scheduled for 15 to 24 May 2024. A meeting of the intersessional working Group on MASS has been scheduled for 30 October to 3 November 2023. The next meeting of NCSR has been scheduled for 4 to 13 June 2024.