World Maritime Day 2012 will be celebrated this week (the specific date is up to individual countries) with the theme: “IMO: One hundred years after the Titanic”. The International Maritime Organisation has done a great job in raising the global standards for marine safety. Even so, we can’t get ourselves to join the celebration. Not only do we dread hearing the usual platitudes and motherhood statements. A century after the Titanic, three things leave us feeling cold and wanting to stay away from it all and just drink our daily dose of hot coffee:
Substandard shipping persists and major sea accidents still occur. This, notwithstanding the never-ending campaign against flags of convenience (FOCs); higher safety standards; tighter inspection regimes; increased crew training requirements; new ship technologies; and the continuing orgy of conferences that deal with safety. It sometimes makes us wonder: to what extent has the culture of maritime safety really been planted and propagated amongst shipping companies and seafarers?
Seafarers are still treated as commodities. The commodification of those who man the ships continues – subtly, through the kind of language maritime folks use (e.g. phrases like “the human element”) or blatantly, through the exploitation of seafarers and would-be seafarers (e.g., Manila’s flunkey system in which cadets are made to work as unpaid office help in manning agencies, sometimes for months on end). The culture of maritime safety should proceed from the premise that all human life is precious. How can seafarers be expected to imbibe this culture when they’re treated no better than commodities coming out of the factory?
The International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW) is still copyrighted to IMO. The STCW is as vital to promoting marine safety as the SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea) Convention. The IMO copyright means that access to the full text of the STCW is restricted to those who are willing to purchase a copy from IMO’s network of distributors. We’ve asked the question before and we’ll ask it again: why can’t the IMO be like the International Labour Organisation, which provides unhampered online access to all ILO conventions?
Well, perhaps things will change a hundred years from now. ~Barista Uno
Related blog posts:
Commodification of seafarers goes on
