{"id":750,"date":"2026-09-20T03:46:30","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T03:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/un-secretary-general-says-conflicts-are-infringing-navigation-as-world-maritime-day-falls-on-24-september\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T03:47:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T03:47:30","slug":"un-secretary-general-says-conflicts-are-infringing-navigation-as-world-maritime-day-falls-on-24-september","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/un-secretary-general-says-conflicts-are-infringing-navigation-as-world-maritime-day-falls-on-24-september\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Secretary-General Says Conflicts Are Infringing Navigation as World Maritime Day Falls on 24 September"},"content":{"rendered":"

The International Maritime Organization has posted the United Nations Secretary-General\u2019s message for World Maritime Day 2026, which falls this Thursday, 24 September. Ant\u00f3nio Guterres\u2019s text, already on the Organization\u2019s World Maritime Day page, is not a ceremonial greeting. It says the framework that makes seafaring more efficient, fair, sustainable and safe is under strain. \u201cConflicts and geopolitical tensions are infringing on navigational rights and freedoms that must be restored.\u201d Seafarers\u2019 lives are being threatened. The global supply of fuel, fertilizers and food has been disrupted. Those shocks, he writes, have devastating consequences, especially for developing countries. At least 80 per cent of international trade still moves by sea.<\/p>\n

That is the political sentence operators will be asked about on Thursday. It is also the implementation sentence. The 2026\u20132027 World Maritime Day theme is \u201cFrom Policy to Practice: Powering Maritime Excellence,\u201d the first time IMO has run the theme for a biennium rather than a single September. The Organization\u2019s own gloss is blunt: conventions, codes and guidelines deliver safer, cleaner shipping only when they are ratified, written into national law and used on the ship. The Member State Audit Scheme has already reported gaps in national legislation and enforcement. World Maritime Day this year is therefore a survey, manning, port-state and war-risk week, not a lighting ceremony that can be ignored until the photographs go up.<\/p>\n

IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez put the same point in seafarer language in the message released around the middle of last week. \u201cThis year, shipping has been tested.\u201d \u201cRegrettably, too many seafarers have lost their lives due to geopolitical conflicts.\u201d Thoughts, he said, were first and foremost with those seafarers and their families. Energy and food supply chains have been disrupted. \u201cAt IMO, we will always provide strong, steadfast support for shipping and seafarers.\u201d And then the line that belongs in the SMS as well as on the headquarters fa\u00e7ade: \u201cSeafarers come first, always.\u201d Regulations, he said, will only deliver safer, more resilient and cleaner shipping when they are implemented worldwide, and \u201cimplementation must make a difference where it matters the most, for the people working at sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Thursday actually is<\/h2>\n

World Maritime Day is observed on the last Thursday of September. In 2026 that is 24 September. IMO headquarters on Albert Embankment will be illuminated in blue that evening \u201cto symbolise our commitment to turning policy into practice.\u201d Member States, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs in consultative status are invited to light landmarks and to share how they turn maritime policy into practice, using the hashtags the Secretariat has already published. The World Maritime Day Parallel Event will be held in Busan, Republic of Korea, on 26 and 27 October. Those dates are in the circular. They are not a substitute for the instruments that are already in force, or for the ones that slipped last week.<\/p>\n

Guterres\u2019s message names the people who have to do the converting: seafarers, port workers, ship operators and inspectors. \u201cFrom worker safety to the energy transition, these laws and policies protect crews and help preserve our oceans.\u201d That list is the week\u2019s desk file. A master on a southern Hormuz track, a cargo planner under a Paris or Tokyo MoU concentrated inspection campaign, a DPA staring at an EU ETS surrender deadline, and a crewing manager trying to man a Black Sea inbound are all being asked to implement something that was agreed in London, Brussels or a flag administration and that is now colliding with four live theatres. IMO has already put those theatres on one page: Hormuz, the Red Sea, Somalia and the Black Sea. Dominguez told the Carriage of Cargoes and Containers sub-committee on 16 September that conflicts are being used as a pretext to attack merchant vessels, that the Organization has verified 80 attacks around Hormuz since 28 February with at least 22 seafarer deaths, that Red Sea attacks have resumed, and that Black Sea and Azov fatalities are in the dozens and hard to verify.<\/p>\n

CCC 12 closed in London on 18 September. That sitting is a separate scorecard, already on this desk: alcohol-fuel interim guidelines finalised for MSC 113 in June 2027, lashing-software language for the Cargo Securing Manual also heading to MSC 113, low-flashpoint oil-fuel guidelines delayed a year, fuel-cell amendments out of time, onboard carbon capture only started. World Maritime Day does not reopen that sitting. It is the reminder that a finalised draft is not yet an implemented circular, and that a delayed circular is not an excuse to drop declaration, lashing or bunker documentation this week.<\/p>\n

The implementation calendar sitting on the same week<\/h2>\n

Paris and Tokyo MoU cargo-securing concentrated inspection campaigns run through 30 November 2026. Inspectors will not have next June\u2019s MSC 113 circular in hand. They will have the approved Cargo Securing Manual, the lashing on the ship, and a growing expectation that any software output matches the manual. China MSA\u2019s ten-item questionnaire is already in the same season. A World Maritime Day speech about putting policy into practice is, for a containership or a general-cargo vessel calling a Paris or Tokyo port this autumn, a cargo-securing inspection.<\/p>\n

The EU ETS 70 per cent surrender deadline for 2025 emissions falls on 30 September, six days after Thursday. EUA prices have been sitting near \u20ac83. That is not an IMO instrument. It is the regional climate rule that will be invoiced whether or not MEPC 85, scheduled for 30 November to 3 December in London, lands a global Net-Zero Framework. ISWG-GHG 22 in the first week of September did not produce final MARPOL text. Fuel certification, lifecycle accounting and the incentive design were deferred. Operators who have been waiting for a global fuel standard before they treat EU MRV, FuelEU and ETS as live files will miss a surrender date that does not wait for MEPC.<\/p>\n

NOx Technical Code amendments under MEPC.398(83) have been in force since 1 September. Engine recertification, the Engine Emission test plan and the 85 per cent rated-power point are already a class and flag conversation for ships that change NOx-relevant settings. Liberia\u2019s ISPS Level 3 designation for the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden remains in force for Liberian-flagged ships in the NAVCENT box. Those are implemented instruments. Lighting a building blue on Thursday does not add a sixth month of grace.<\/p>\n

Dominguez also named the decade\u2019s other implementation pile: digitalisation, the energy transition, and creating more opportunities for women so the sector is more inclusive. Those are biennium themes. They are not a reason to park the war-risk file. Guterres\u2019s message puts navigational rights and seafarer lives in the first paragraph because that is the 2026 failure mode. Policy that is not practised on a Hormuz southern route, a Bab el-Mandeb transit, a Somali Basin passage or a Ukrainian-port inbound is policy that leaves the crew exposed.<\/p>\n

What \u201cpolicy to practice\u201d means on the ship this week<\/h2>\n

On a war-risk passage, practice is BMP, a named abort port, extra lookouts, a UAV watch, citadel and fire party, AIS fields that actually match the ship, and a written rule for directed hails. JMIC has kept Hormuz at SEVERE. UKMTO\u2019s regional picture has put 22 of 35 projectile strikes since 6 July on the southern Omani corridor, with engine rooms hit in 24 of those incidents. CENTCOM said on 18 September that U.S. forces had redirected 105 commercial vessels in the blockade file. None of that is a substitute for Iranian clearance language, and none of it is cancelled by a World Maritime Day theme. The theme says the law of the sea has to be used, not photographed.<\/p>\n

On a cargo ship, practice is the IMDG or IMSBC declaration, the Cargo Securing Manual, and a lashing arrangement that will survive a CIC inspector who has read the WSC file on undeclared lithium batteries. Special Provision 188 was not closed at CCC 12. Declaration remains the control. A container that is legally exempt piece by piece can still be a hold fire when thousands of cells travel undeclared as a consolidated load.<\/p>\n

On a dual-fuel or biofuel ship, practice is the circular that actually exists. Methyl\/ethyl alcohol ships still sit on MSC.1\/Circ.1621 (2020) until MSC 113. Low-flashpoint oil fuels in the 52\u00b0C to 60\u00b0C band do not yet have a finished IMO guideline. Fuel-cell ships remain on MSC.1\/Circ.1647 plus class. \u201cOCCS-ready\u201d is a yard option without a circular until late in the decade. Charter recaps that treat last week\u2019s London sitting as instant permission are ahead of the text.<\/p>\n

On a European voyage, practice is the ETS and FuelEU file that will be audited in six days, not the Net-Zero Framework that may or may not be adopted in December. On a Liberian-flag ship in the southern Red Sea, practice is ISPS Level 3, not a press line that some Asia\u2013Europe loops have gone back to Suez. Guterres asked governments, labour and the private sector to restore navigational rights. Until that happens, the DPA\u2019s job is to implement the parts of the framework that still have a date attached.<\/p>\n

What Operators Should Note<\/h2>\n