Casualties and Unregulated Maritime Migrancy Are Top IMO Issues of 2014

2014 will be remembered as another year of very serious maritime casualties involving passenger ships, with the tragedy of Sewol and the fire aboard the Norman Atlantic. IMO must take action to investigate these maritime accidents and improve safety standards of passenger ships. In this context, I urge IMO member governments to review the current level of safety standards of passenger ships at the Maritime Safety Committee in June and discuss how we could strengthen our system and prevent such very serious maritime accidents involving passenger ships in future. I urge the authorities of Italy and Greece to accelerate the process of the casualty investigation and submit findings to IMO as soon as possible.

On the issue of maritime migrants on board Blue Sky M, the international community must take action now to address the people-smugglers that are behind this sort of migration and consider ways to prevent similar incidents of sending hundreds of migrants on unlawful and unregulated sea passages. As I declared at the High Level Dialogue organised by the UN High Commission for Refugees in December, I am convening an inter-agency meeting at IMO Headquarters in March to address smugglers behind maritime migrants and consider effective measures to prevent migrants taking unlawful and unregulated sea passages.

The international community must take action to address maritime migration in the twenty-first century.