More documents are being disclosed in advance of committee meetings at the International Maritime Organization, but one quarter of the member governments still kept their pre-meeting submissions confidential for an upcoming meeting on environmental issues, according to a check by eyeonglobaltransparency.net.
The data provides a first look at how a 2018 IMO reform is affecting transparency at the United Nations agency charged with overseeing ocean shipping. Having the ”vast majority” of pre-meeting documents revealed is a positive sign, according to Frederick J. Kenney, director of the IMO’s Legal Affairs and External Relations Division.
Until the change, virtually no government documents submitted prior to committee meetings were public. Member states were free to state their positions in public, but few did.
A July 2018 IMO rules change permits IMO member states to put their submissions on the IMO public docket. The IMO staff asks them if they want to do so. Disclosure is not required, however, so outside observers will still not be able to see pre-meeting documents if governments choose to veto their release.
Materials on the nonpublic site are available to member countries and accredited observers (primarily industry groups and a few environmental groups), but they are prohibited from sharing them publicly.
IMO committee meetings are held semi-privately. Reporters can attend but may not quote delegates without their explicit permission.
After the meetings, however, all government submissions are made public. The IMO summarizes the decisions reached at meetings.
EYE has written about a dozen stories on transparency at the IMO, beginning with a four-part series in June 2018.
Spot-Checking the New Policy
An upcoming May 13-17 committee meeting of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee is one of the first tests of the new disclosure policy.
According to IMO numbers, about three-fourths of government pre-meeting submissions were public and one-quarter were kept secret until after the meeting.
To determine these figures, eyeonglobaltransparency.net looked at the number of documents available on April 17 for the May meeting. On the public online docket (IMODOCs) there were 141 total public documents. (Because submissions are required well in advance, the number was the same on May 10.)
By contrast, there were 176 public and nonpublic documents on April 17, according to a check made by an IMO staff member.
This means there were 35 nonpublic documents for the May MEPC meeting, 80 percent of the total – 4 out of five of all pre-meeting documents.
The percentage is lower if you exclude the 42 documents from the IMO staff (known as the Secretariat). All of these are made public, so the number is the same on both dockets.
Not counting the Secretariat documents there were 134 total government documents, of which 35 were nonpublic, meaning that 74 percent of government submissions were viewable and 26 percent were nonpublic.
In other words, three-fourths of countries made their submissions public and one quarter kept them secret.
Whether this pattern continues remains to be seen.
The voluntary disclosure option has been available to the five IMO committees for about a year and all committees have adopted it. But the rollout has been staggered because of meeting schedules. This is the first MEPC meeting under the new rules.
The open docket option does not apply to working groups or the IMO Council, the key IMO decision-making body. Council documents are made public after three years. (The Assembly, a meeting of all members, meets every three years, in public).
Kenney Describes One Non-Disclosure
After the MEPC meeting, it will be possible to determine who vetoed disclosure, though understanding why will be more difficult to learn.
Kenney said in an April 8 interview with EYE that he knew of only specific instance of nondisclosure by a government. He explaining that “it was on a fairly sensitive issue, politically and security wise.”
Virtually all documents prepared by the Secretariat are now disclosed in advance. Kenney said the only exception he knew of was for a paper describing involved counter-piracy methods.
Kenney considers the transparency reforms as positive although he said during the April 8 interview with EYE that it is “too early” to assess how the change has affected decision-making.
He cited with concern a couple of examples in which he said the press had misrepresented a government submission.
Restrictions on Press Coverage
Kenney supervises the enforcement of the IMO’s rules on how reporters cover IMO committee meetings.
Reporters are allowed to attend what are officially private sessions, he said, and must abide by certain conditions. One requirement is that reporters must get permission of delegates before quoting them. (See previous EYE article here.)
While not taking a position on whether the media policy should be changed, Kenney said that managing such a regime is a complication that would not exist with standard open meeting rules where quote checking is not required.
“There is the balance between impeding reporting and impeding the member stated from freely expressing their views in what is supposed to be a private meeting,” he said, adding, “Certainly we have had some member states who get very upset when they get quoted without permission.”
There are some gray areas in the policy, he agreed, including whether a reporter can summarize a member state’s position as expressed in a meeting, but without quoting the delegate.
Kenney said it would depend on whether the country involved objected, in which case the IMO would ask for a retraction.
Other Reforms Under Consideration
In the short-term, the prospect of other IMO transparency reforms appears distant, but they are on the radar.
The Council in 2018 established a working group to look at various IMO structural reforms. So far, the high-profile issue concerns the rules on voting, but more transparency has been suggested.
Australia has led the effort, proposing among other things, that the electronic versions of IMO reports and publications be available free of charge. Australia also supported removal of restrictions on press coverage and creation of an access to information policy.
Kenney Comments on Australia’s Proposals
Kenney said the problem with cutting fees on publications is how to replace the lost revenues. The revenues of $5-6 million go to the Integrated Technical Cooperation Program that helps less developed nations build up their human and institutional capacities for uniform and effective compliance with the IMO regulatory framework.
The IMO requires vessels to have onboard IMO publications that deal with many operational aspects, including safe cargo handling, oil spill prevention and collision avoidance activities.
The IMO Secretariat is examining the Australian publication fees proposal and will issue a report by July when the reform committee meets again, he said.
Not under study by the Secretariat, Kenney said, is establishment of a FOIA regime.
There appears to be little immediate likelihood of moving from voluntary to mandatory disclosure of pre-meeting submissions since the change was just instituted.
On extending document disclosure reforms to subcommittees and working groups, Kenney cited the technical nature of their work, saying:
When you are dealing with very kind of detailed specific technical information people have to be able to talk freely. A lot of times there are talking about calculations and formulas and if someone makes a mistake they don’t want to be quoted on that. They have to be able to work through that. So given that they are trying to improve safety and things like that they have to be able to speak freely.
