The International Maritime Organization (IMO

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) [known as the Inter-Governmental Maritime

Consultative Organization (IMCO) until 1982] is a specialized organization of the United
Nations which responsible for regulating shipping. The IMO was established in Geneva in
1948 and came into force ten years later, meeting for the first time in 1959. Headquartered in
London, United Kingdom, the IMO has 172 Member States and three Associate Members.
The IMO's primary purpose is to develop and maintain a comprehensive regulatory framework
for shipping and its remit today includes safety, environmental concerns, legal matters, technical
co-operation, maritime security and the efficiency of shipping.

Structure: The IMO consists of an Assembly, a Council and five main Committees: the
Maritime Safety Committee; the Marine Environment Protection Committee; the Legal
Committee; the Technical Co-operation Committee and the Facilitation Committee. 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.

Secretary-General:
The current Secretary-General of IMO is Ki Tack Lim (South Korea), elected for a four-year
term at the 106th session of the IMO Council in June 2015 and at the 27th session of the IMO's
Assembly in November 2015. His mandate started on 1 January 2016.
Previous Secretaries-General:

 1959 Ove Nielsen (Denmark)

 1961 William Graham (United Kingdom; acting, following death of Mr Nielsen)
 1963 Jean Roullier (France)
 1968 Colin Goad (United Kingdom)
 1974 Chandrika Prasad Srivastava (India)
 1990 William O'Neil (Canada)
 2003 Efthimios E. Mitropoulos (Greece)
 2011 Koji Sekimizu (Japan)

Maritime Safety Committee:

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

The Maritime Safety Committee is the most senior of these and is the main Technical
Committee; it oversees the work of its nine sub-committees and initiates new topics. One broad
topic it deals with is the effect of the human element on casualties; this work has been put to all
of the sub-committees, but meanwhile, the Maritime Safety Committee has developed a code for
the management of ships which will ensure that agreed operational procedures are in place and
followed by the ship and shore-side staff.