The UN body, IMO (International Maritime Organization) is
headquartered in London and is made up of a large number of member
states with international shipping interests. Organisationally, the
IMO is divided into a number of committees and sub-committees with
the Assembly and the Council at the top of the organisation. There
is also a secretariat whose duties include arranging the practical
details of meetings and producing resolutions, codes and other
material according to decisions taken at meetings.
Dangerous goods in packaged form and transport of solid bulk
cargoes are dealth with by the DSC (Sub-Committee on
Dangerous Goods, Solid Cargoes and Containers). Transport
of liquid substances and gases in build are discussed in the
BLG (Sub-Committee on Bulk Liquids and Gases).
Before sub-committee decisions can take force, they must be
adopted by the head committees. The MSC (Maritime
Safety Committee) and MEPC (Marine
Environment Protection Committee) take final decisions regarding
dangerous goods.
Subjects discussed by the DSC include amendments to the IMDG and
BC Codes. All member states have the opportunity to submit proposed
amendments before the meeting and to attend meetings and argue on
behalf of their own proposals and discuss those of other States. A
number of organisations with observer status also attend
meetings.
The IMDG Code is amended every other year and since the Code is
so comprehensive, the proposed amendments also tend to be numerous
and detailed. To facilitate the incorporation of amendments into
the Code, an Editorial and Technical Group
(the E&T Group was formed. It meets in
conjunction with the DSC to ensure that the adopted amendments are
inserted into the Code in a technically and editorially correct
way. Sweden is also represented in the E&T Group.
It is important to Sweden to take advantage of oppportunities to
influence the wording and content of regulations as most of them
are incorporated into Swedish legislation and
become binding in Swedish territorial waters and on Swedish ships,
e.g., through regulations.
More information about meetings is available from the
International Secretariat of the Swedish Transport Agency, Maritime
Department.