International Maritime Organization

History

In February–March 1948 the United Nations Maritime Conference in Geneva institutionalized the regulation of the safety of shipping into an international framework. Hitherto such international conventions had been initiated piecemeal, notably the Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS), adopted in 1914 following the Titanic disaster. The conference resolved "that an international organization to be known as the Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization shall be established"; however many countries did not trust the convention, so ratification was slow and it took until March 1958 until it came into force.

The Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO; now using the hyphen) held its first Assembly in London in January 1959. Its initial task was to update the SOLAS; the resulting 1960 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea was recast in 1974 and subsequently modified and updated to adapt to changes in safety requirements and technology. Since 1978, every last Thursday of September has been celebrated as World Maritime Day.

When IMCO began its operations in 1959 certain other pre-existing conventions were brought under its aegis, most notably the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil (OILPOL) from 1954. Under the guidance of IMCO, the convention was amended in 1962, 1969, and 1971.

As oil trade and industry developed, many people in the industry saw a need for further improvements in regards to pollution prevention. This became increasingly apparent in 1967, when the tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground entering the English Channel and spilled record-breaking 120,000 tons of crude oil. This incident prompted a series of new conventions.

IMO held an emergency session of its council to deal with the need to readdress regulations pertaining to maritime pollution. In 1969, the IMO Assembly decided to host an international gathering in 1973 dedicated to this issue. The goal was to develop an international agreement for controlling general environmental contamination by ships when out at sea. During the next few years IMO brought to the forefront a series of measures designed to prevent large ship accidents and to minimize their effects. It also detailed how to deal with the environmental threat caused by routine ship duties such as the cleaning of oil cargo tanks or the disposal of engine room wastes. By tonnage, the aforementioned was a bigger problem than accidental pollution. The most significant development to come out of this conference was the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973 (MARPOL). It covers not only accidental and operational oil pollution but also different types of pollution by chemicals, goods in packaged form, sewage, garbage and air pollution. The original MARPOL was signed on 17 February 1973, but did not come into force due to lack of ratifications. The current convention is a combination of 1973 Convention and the 1978 Protocol. It entered into force on 2 October 1983. As of December 2025, 162 states, representing 98.89 per cent of the world's shipping tonnage, are signatories to the MARPOL convention.

Headquarters

The IMO headquarters is a large purpose-built building facing the River Thames on the Albert Embankment, in Lambeth, London. The organization moved into its new headquarters in late 1982, with the building being officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 17 May 1983. The architects of the building were Douglass Marriott, Worby & Robinson. The front of the building is dominated by a seven-metre high, ten-tonne bronze sculpture of the bow of a ship, with a lone seafarer maintaining a look-out. The previous headquarters of IMO were at 101 Piccadilly (now the home of the Embassy of Japan), prior to that at 22 Berners Street in Fitzrovia and originally in Chancery Lane.

Structure

The IMO consists of an Assembly, a Council and five main Committees. The organization is led by a Secretary-General. A number of Sub-Committees support the work of the main technical committees.

Governance of IMO

The governing body of the International Maritime Organization is the Assembly which meets every two years. In between Assembly sessions a Council, consisting of 40 Member States elected by the Assembly, acts as the governing body. The technical work of the International Maritime Organization is carried out by a series of Committees. The Secretariat consists of some 300 international civil servants headed by a Secretary-General.

The Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez took office for a four year term on 1 January 2024, having been elected in July 2023. The previous Secretary-General was Kitack Lim from South Korea elected for a four-year term at the 114th session of the IMO Council in June 2015 and at the 29th session of the IMO's Assembly in November 2015. His mandate started on 1 January 2016. At the 31st session of the Assembly in 2019 he was re-appointed for a second term, ending on 31 December 2023.

Technical committees

The technical work of the International Maritime Organization is carried out by five principal Committees:

The Maritime Safety Committee (MSC)

The Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC)

The Legal Committee

The Technical Cooperation Committee, for capacity building

The Facilitation Committee, to simplify the documentation and formalities required in international shipping. The Committees meet once or twice a year attended by Member States and NGOs.

It is regulated in the Article 28(a) of the Convention on the IMO:

ARTICLE 28

(a) The Maritime Safety Committee shall consider any matter within the scope of the Organization concerned with aids to navigation, construction and equipment of vessels, manning from a safety standpoint, rules for the prevention of collisions, handling of dangerous cargoes, maritime safety procedures and requirements, hydrographic information, log-books and navigational records, marine casualty investigation, salvage and rescue, and any other matters directly affecting maritime safety.

(b) The Maritime Safety Committee shall provide machinery for performing any duties assigned to it by this Convention, the Assembly or the Council, or any duty within the scope of this Article which may be assigned to it by or under any other international instrument and accepted by the Organization.

(c) Having regard to the provisions of Article 25, the Maritime Safety Committee, upon request by the Assembly or the Council or, if it deems such action useful in the interests of its own work, shall maintain such close relationship with other bodies as may further the purposes of the Organization

Membership

To join the IMO, a state ratifies a multilateral Convention on the International Maritime Organization. As of 2025, there are 176 member states of the IMO, which includes 175 of the UN member states plus the Cook Islands. The first state to ratify the convention was Canada in October 1948, but it took until March 1958 when Egypt and Japan brought the number of parties to 21, required by the Convention.

These are the current members with the year they joined:

The three associate members are the Faroe Islands (2002), Hong Kong (1967) and Macau (1990).

In 1961, the territories of Sabah and Sarawak, which had been included through the participation of United Kingdom, became joint associate members; in 1963 they became part of Malaysia.

The most recent new members are Armenia (landlocked, January 2018), Nauru (May 2018), Botswana (landlocked, October 2021) and, on 27 February 2024, landlocked Kyrgyzstan became the 176th Member State of the organization.

Most UN member states that are not members of IMO are landlocked countries. These include Afghanistan, Andorra, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Eswatini, Laos, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The Federated States of Micronesia, an island-nation in the Pacific Ocean, is also a non-member. Taiwan, as Republic of China, was a member of the IMCO from 1958 until UN changed its recognition to People's Republic of China in 1971; its later attempts to join IMO were blocked, although it has a major shipping industry.

Legal instruments

IMO is the source of approximately 60 legal instruments that guide the regulatory development of its member states to improve safety at sea, facilitate trade among seafaring states and protect the maritime environment. The most well known is the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), as well as International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL). Others include the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds (IOPC). It also functions as a depository of yet to be ratified treaties, such as the International Convention on Liability and Compensation for Damage in Connection with the Carriage of Hazardous and Noxious Substances by Sea, 1996 (HNS Convention) and Nairobi International Convention of Removal of Wrecks (2007).

IMO regularly enacts regulations, which are broadly enforced by national and local maritime authorities in member countries, such as the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREG). The IMO has also enacted a Port state control (PSC) authority, allowing domestic maritime authorities such as coast guards to inspect foreign-flag ships calling at ports of the many port states. Memoranda of Understanding (protocols) were signed by some countries unifying Port State Control procedures among the signatories.

Conventions, Codes and Regulations:

MARPOL Convention

Marpol Annex I

SOLAS Convention

IMDG Code

ISM Code

ISPS Code

Polar Code

IGF Code

IGC Code

IBC Code

TDC Code

International Code on Intact Stability

INF Code

Current priorities

Recent initiatives at the IMO have included amendments to SOLAS, which among other things, included upgraded fire protection standards on passenger ships, the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seamen (STCW) which establishes basic requirements on training, certification and watchkeeping for seafarers and to the Convention on the Prevention of Maritime Pollution (MARPOL 73/78), which required double hulls on all tankers.

Environmental issues

The IMO has a role in tackling international climate change. The First Intersessional Meeting of IMO's Working Group on Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Ships took place in Oslo, Norway (June 2008), tasked with developing the technical basis for the reduction mechanisms that may form part of a future IMO regime to control greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping, and a draft of the actual reduction mechanisms themselves, for further consideration by IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC). The IMO participated in the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris seeking to establish itself as the "appropriate international body to address greenhouse gas emissions from ships engaged in international trade". Nonetheless, there has been widespread criticism of the IMO's relative inaction since the conclusion of the Paris conference, with the initial data-gathering step of a three-stage process to reduce maritime greenhouse emissions expected to last until 2020. In 2018, the Initial IMO Strategy on the reduction of GHG emissions from ships was adopted.

In April 2025, the IMO's Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) approved net-zero regulations for the global shipping industry to reach net-zero GHG emissions in the shipping industry by or around 2050. The changes would require that from 2028, shipowners would be required to use cleaner fuels or face a carbon pricing mechanism. However, in October 2025, at a 2nd extraordinary session, adoption of the amendments to MARPOL Annex VI to bring the regulations into force were delayed to a future session.

The IMO has also taken action to mitigate the global effects of ballast water and sediment discharge, through the 2004 Ballast Water Management Convention, which entered into force in September 2017.

In April 2025, at the IMO MEPC 83 meeting, the IMO agreed to develop a legally binding framework for controlling and managing ships' biofouling to reduce the accumulation of marine organisms on the hulls of ships and thereby reduce the transfer of invasive aquatic species. Controlling ship's biofouling also improves the environmental efficiency of ships by reducing drag resistance.

Maritime safety

The IMO's e-Navigation system has harmonized marine navigation systems with supporting shore services, as available to seamen and shore-side traffic services called. An e-Navigation strategy was ratified in 2005, and an implementation plan was developed through three IMO sub-committees. The plan was completed by 2014 and implemented in November of that year.

On 1 January 2011, ECDIS (Electronic Chart Display Information Systems) were made mandatory for new ships and for existing ships subject to a phased update process which was completed on 1 July 2018.

In December 2023, the IMO adopted a resolution targeting "Shadow fleet" ("dark fleet") tankers that form a risk by undertaking illegal and unsafe activities at sea. Primarily working for Iran and Russia to breach international sanctions, the tankers, many of which are elderly and unreliable, often undertake mid ocean transfers in an attempt to evade sanctions. The resolution calls upon flag states to "adhere to measures which lawfully prohibit or regulate" the transfer of cargoes at sea, known as ship-to-ship transfers.

In June 2025, the IMO adopted amendments to SOLAS Regulation V/23 on improving pilot ladder safety, including associated new Performance Standards for pilot transfer arrangements (to take effect 1 January 2028).

Fishing safety

The IMO Cape Town Agreement is an international International Maritime Organization legal instrument established in 2012, that sets out minimum safety requirements for fishing vessels of 24 metres in length and over or equivalent in gross tons. The Agreement is expected to come into force in February 2027, one year after Argentina ratified the Agreement.