The international regulation of shipping

By its very nature, shipping is an international business. Around ninety percent of world trade is transported by ships. The global nature of the industry demands global regulation. Indeed, there is a long history of international cooperation in relation to the regulation of shipping. In the early years much of this cooperation took place through ad hoc diplomatic conferences. Following the Second World War, these cooperative efforts were largely placed on an institutional footing through the creation of specialized international organizations. In particular, states established the International Maritime Organization (IMO) as a specialized agency of the United Nations in order to oversee the development of international law concerning maritime transport and related issues.

The IMO had already been in operation for almost thirty-five years by the time that the Law of the Sea Convention was concluded in 1982. The Convention did not seek to interfere with the formal role and functions of preexisting international organizations, which were, in any case, not “subject to the dictats of an intergovernmental conference.” Nevertheless, the conclusion of the Law of the Sea Convention has had major consequences for all international organizations involved in maritime affairs. In particular it affected the international regulation of shipping by fundamentally revising the legal framework within which the IMO and its Member States must operate.