International Conference on the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships

Executive summary: This document provides proposals with regard to two fundamental issues which will determine the success or failure of the Convention’s ability to set an acceptable human and environmental standard for the breaking of the world fleet. It is imperative that this Convention at a minimum puts a halt to the crudest and most unacceptable shipbreaking method and the externalization of health and environmental costs onto some of the world’s poorest communities in developing countries. To this end, the civil society environmental and human rights organizations submitting these proposals strongly recommend that the Convention explicitly recognizes beaching as a substandard practice to be prohibited and establish a mandatory fund that will inter alia enable this fatally flawed method to be phased out