THE political boundaries of the International Maritime Organization are set to be tested next week when questions over Ukrainian maritime security and the growing the risk of uninsured and unsafe ships in the so-called dark fleet* will be discussed by the international regulator’s ruling Council.

While the IMO secretariat has previously condemned Russia’s campaign to “interfere with navigation in the Black Sea” and has raised serious concerns regarding the risk of uninsured and unsafe ships engaged in sanctions circumventing trades, the security and safety spillover from Russian actions present a highly politicised series of diplomatic problems for the United Nations agency to navigate. 

A formal request by Ukraine to the IMO’s secretary general to support an international monitoring mission in Odesa was unexpectedly tabled in time for next week’s Council meeting which starts in London at IMO headquarters on Monday.

The request, which comes amid routine Russian attacks targeting Ukrainian maritime infrastructure and several strikes against ships, will present the first major test for the Council since Russia was ousted last year from the ruling body.

Ukraine has repeatedly requested further actions and support from IMO member states in curtailing Russian aggression and had raised the prospect of a monitoring mission last year. However, with little backing from member states who viewed the IMO as the wrong body to progress contentious security issues, the proposal was shelved by Ukraine.

Politicised lobbying 

The resumption of Ukraine’s bid to use the IMO as an avenue towards greater support from states against Russia’s attacks comes amid a subtly shifting power balance within the IMO.

Whereas government representation had previously tended to fall to technocrats and transport officials, the increasing politicisation of the IMO’s agenda, notably on issues of decarbonisation and international security, has seen several key states upgrade the seniority of representation towards foreign ministries.

The US delegation now has two full-time State Department officials on the IMO team and the UK’s permanent representative to the IMO was moved away from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency earlier this year to be overseen by an official seconded in from the Foreign Office. That pattern has been replicated across several member state delegations over the past year.

Meanwhile, Ukraine itself has taken a more aggressive stance in seeking support within the UN structure after the country’s former highest-ranking general, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, took over as Kyiv’s ambassador to the United Kingdom in July.

“The escalation of military actions by the armed forces of the Russian Federation government against civilian ships docked at seaports, along with the cold-blooded killing of sailors, port workers, and other personnel, unequivocally demonstrates the terrorist aggressor state’s intent to completely dismantle international shipping in the Black and Azov Seas,” states a Ukraine submission to next week’s Council meeting.

“Coupled with the Russian Federation’s use of seaports in Crimea and along the coast of the Sea of Azov — both occupied by the Russian Federation and closed by Ukraine — to export grain stolen from Ukraine, these actions starkly reflect a brazen and brutal disregard for a fellow member of the IMO, a former member of its Council, and for all decisions made by the IMO and its bodies,” the statement continues.

Despite the shifting political balance within the Council, Ukraine’s request for an IMO-backed mission to monitor “the security situation in the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait” is likely to gain sufficient support to move ahead.

The most likely outcome would see the Council diplomatically transfer the request to a technical co-operation sub-committee, where the requestion could be assessed as a de-politicised function of administrative merit.

But the very fact that the request might progress within the IMO rather than being kicked up to the UN Security Council suggests a growing willingness to tackle these issues via a technical process.

The hot-housed dark fleet 

The other major issue likely to come up next week, albeit not via a formal submission, is the growing concern regarding the safety and security threat posed by the so-called dark fleet.

“It is the big one that has been lurking in the margins, but it is absolutely getting discussed and is taking up the most amount of bandwidth beyond decarbonisation right now,” explained one IMO member state insider.

The increasing transportation “of oil now being conducted by unsafe and uninsured ships” dominated discissions last week within the meeting of the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds governing bodies.

The IOPC Funds have urged member states, many of which are the same representatives meeting at the IMO next week, to redouble efforts to tackle the issue.

However, there is now a growing concern that the Funds have effectively become the underwriter for the dark, or parallel fleet, because inadequate insurance for elderly tankers has allowed anonymous shipowners to avoid accountability for pollution. That is a situation widely seen within the IMO and the IOPC Funds as untenable.

While next week’s Council is unlikely to respond in any overt action namechecking the dark, or parallel fleet, Lloyd’s List understands that the focus of discussion will look at how to de-politicise the issue by tackling substandard shipping and technical measures cracking down on the circumvention of established IMO standards and regulations.

The discussions next week will likely be followed by a flurry of technical papers submitted to next year’s IMO Legal Committee, where the issue will be prioritised in terms of a crackdown on subs-standard shipping.

The first test of that de-politicised technical approach will be at the Council meeting next week, where IMO insiders are looking to see how far the most influential member states are willing to balance the UN agency’s technical mandate on safety against the more contentious politics of international security.

* Lloyd’s List defines a tanker as part of the dark fleet if it is aged 15 years or over, anonymously owned and/or has a corporate structure designed to obfuscate beneficial ownership discovery, solely deployed in sanctioned oil trades, and engaged in one or more of the deceptive shipping practices outlined in US State Department guidance issued in May 2020. The figures exclude tankers tracked to government-controlled shipping entities such as Russia’s Sovcomflot, or Iran’s National Iranian Tanker Co, and those already sanctioned.

Download our explainer on the different risk profiles of the dark fleet here

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