IMO MAKES PROGRESS ON NEW SECURITY CODE

IMO MAKES PROGRESS ON NEW SECURITY CODE    The International Maritime Organization reported that its Maritime Safety Committee has made progress in its work on maritime security during its meetings on May 15-24.
   The committee met at the IMO’s London headquarters to prepare work for the agency’s high level diplomatic conference on maritime security, scheduled in December.
   The Maritime Safety Committee has made progress “to the point where confidence for a successful outcome to the conference is high,” the IMO said.
   The committee will have a second series of working group meetings on security on Sept. 9-13.
   Among a raft of items designed to address maritime security issues, the IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee has proposed a new “International Ship and Port Facility Security Code,” which would be implemented through the Safety of Life at Sea convention’s chapter XI.
   The International Ship and Port Facility Security Code would have two parts, one mandatory and the other recommendatory, the IMO said.
   The security code takes the approach that ensuring the security of ships and port facilities is “basically a risk management activity,” and that an assessment of the risks must be made in each particular case to determine what security measures are appropriate, the U.N agency said.
   The purpose of the security code is to provide a standardized, consistent framework for evaluating risk, enabling governments to offset changes in threat with changes in vulnerability for ships and port facilities, it added.
   To begin the process, each government would conduct port facility security assessments.
   Security assessments would have three essential components:
(1) They must identify and evaluate important assets and infrastructures that are critical to the port facility as well as those areas or structures that, if damaged, could cause significant loss of life or damage to the port facility’s economy or environment;
(2) The assessment must identify the actual threats to those critical assets and infrastructure in order to prioritise security measures;
(3) Finally, the assessment must address vulnerability of the port facility by identifying its weaknesses in physical security, structural integrity, protection systems, procedural policies, communications systems, transportation infrastructure, utilities, and other areas within a port facility that may be a likely target.
   This risk management concept would be embodied in the IMO security code through a number of “minimum functional security requirements” for ships and port facilities. For ships, these requirements would include ship security plans, ship security officers, company security officers, and certain onboard equipment. For port facilities, the requirements would include port facility security plans and port facility security officers. In addition, the requirements for ships and for port facilities would include monitoring and controlling access, monitoring the activities of people and cargo, and ensuring security communications are readily available.
   “Because each ship (or class of ship) and each port facility present different risks, the method in which they will meet the specific requirements of this code will be determined and eventually be approved by the administration or contracting government, as the case may be,” the IMO said.
   To communicate the threat at a port facility or for a ship, the relevant government would set the appropriate security level. Security levels 1, 2, and 3 correspond to low, medium, and high threat situations, respectively. “The security level creates a link between the ship and the port facility, since it triggers the implementation of appropriate security measures for the ship and for the port facility,” the IMO said.
   The draft preamble to the proposed security code states that, as threat increases, the only logical counteraction is to reduce vulnerability.
   The IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee also request the IMO secretary-general to communicate with the World Customs Organization concerning the coordination of work, in particular with regard to container security.
   “This had indeed been an historical session, not so much from the viewpoint of the volume of work the committee was able to accomplish and the thousands of pages of documents it dealt with but, more importantly, in respect of the substance of the decisions made,” said William O’Neil, secretary-general of the IMO, commenting on the work of its Maritime Safety Committee.