By Toby McIntosh
The International Maritime Organization Council has taken two limited steps to improve access to IMO documents.
One change will allow IMO members who submit documents in advance of IMO meetings, including committee meetings, to release them to the public.
The second new source of light is a new requirement that the IMO Secretariat release documents it submits to committees in advance of meetings unless the body to whom they are sent decides to restrict access.
The two alterations, however, leave in place many restrictions on transparency at the UN agency in charge of international policies on ocean shipping.
Discretionary Release Allowed
The potential increase in access to pre-meeting committee materials is left to the discretion of members who submit documents. Otherwise they will be private until afterwards.
At present, members do occasionally announce the thrust of their proposals or react to others’ proposals. It remains to be seen whether the new latitude to release documents will be used.
It appears likely that the public still will not get access to all pre-meeting committee materials.
Such documents are shared not only among the 174 member governments, but also with the 77 IMO-approved industry groups and nongovernmental organizations known as “consultative members.”
Other Transparency Gaps Remain
The IMO still does not have a formal policy governing how the public can request documents. The IMO constrains journalists from reporting on open meetings. And it gives governments authority to veto release of audits on their conformance with IMO standards.
See previous articles by EyeonGlobalTransparency.net on these and other transparency gaps at the IMO.
The limited changes were approved at an IMO Council meeting, held July 2-5 in London. The meetings are closed to the public. The decisions were summarized in a nine paragraph press release.
The press release says that the Council took one other step on transparency, agreeing to “authorize the release of the audio files of the plenary meetings only of the IMO Assembly to the public, via the IMO documents (https://docs.imo.org/) website.” Assembly meetings are open.
The modifications on access to information came as the Council took another reform step, authorizing the creation of a working group on the structure of the IMO’s main governing body. See a summary of the “Council reform” debate by Megan Darby in Climate Change News.
The press release says: “The Council discussed a number of proposals aimed at reforming the Council, including those relating to the Council’s role in policy making; size and geographical distribution conduct of campaigns for election.”
The press release does not suggest that access to information will be on the working committee’s agenda or that any other moves on transparency are being contemplated.
Documents submitted to IMO committees are released after the meetings. This is not the case for Council meetings.
The IMO website’s section on Council documents available to the public contains nothing after 2011. The “Council Summary Records” page has no documents.
The IMO does not release “Summaries” of meetings or “Council Documents and Decisions,” according to the chart. (Also unreleased are “session papers,” working papers or draft reports.)
The IMO one-page document on disclosure of documents states “(summary records have now been replaced with audio recordings).”
However, the audio recordings are not available, and the Council appears to have confirmed their continued confidentiality. (See EYE story on this topic.)
On access to documents, the press release said:
The Council also decided to remove any restriction explicit or implied on sponsors of documents, so that those who wish to release their documents to the public via IMODOCS prior to a meeting can do so.
In addition, documents submitted by the IMO Secretariat to committee meetings will be made available to the public (with the ability for committees to designate specific Secretariat documents as private and non-releasable in advance).
The Secretariat submits a significant number of documents, including activity reports and proposals to amend policies. For the last meeting of the Maritime Safety Committee, for example, one Secretariat proposal was “Amendments to the International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) Code. For that meeting, the Secretariat was responsible for 39 of the 127 posted meeting documents. The rest were submitted by member governments.
