IWG on MASS: Newsletter 2/2023

In 2014 I was visiting a client’s office in the UK and they told me that they were becoming involved in the development of unmanned ships and were participating in an initiative funded by the UK Government looking into how unmanned ships might be regulated. This sounded like something the CMI must be involved with so the next time I saw Stuart Hetherington, I asked him what group within the CMI was looking into unmanned ships.

Stuart responded saying he had never heard of unmanned ships and as far as he was aware the CMI had no involvement. A few months later I got an email from Karl Gombrii, the President of CMI, as follows: “You may already know that an International Working Group has been created by the Executive Council in Istanbul and you appointed as its chairman”.

Thus, the CMI IWG on MASS was formed, and thus I became involved with this IWG, with very little knowledge of what unmanned ships were or what legal issues would arise at IMO and elsewhere!

Fortunately we were able to find a large number of experts within the CMI network who had already worked on the subject, and rapidly we were able to put together a fantastic collection of people who understood the legal and technical issues surrounding autonomous shipping. Over the years we have added more experts to the IWG and I believe we probably have the most knowledgeable and broadest group of legal experts on this topic in the world, covering a large number of jurisdictions.

In March 2017 the IWG issued a position paper on Unmanned Ships and a Questionnaire, and these were circulated to member associations. We received a good response from the Member Associations, and these can be found on the CMI website.

The IWG have been working with IMO since then, making substantial submissions to the Legal Committee in 2017 and 2019 and to the MSC in 2018 and 2020. These submissions reported on the work of the IWG in analysing the conventions under the purview of the Legal Committee and the MSC, and these submissions form an important contribution to the IMO scoping exercise which they have been conducting.

The IWG is working on a summary of all the work on the Conventions (including Conventions which are not the purview of the IMO) and it is hoped that this may be published in the course of next year.

This year the IWG has participated in the IMO Joint Working Group formed to accommodate the work of both the MSC and the Legal Committee, and the IWG is currently working on a paper on liability, a subject which so far has not been at the core of IMO’s work and which the IWG sees as an area where the CMI can make a helpful contribution. This paper will be submitted to the Legal Committee meeting in April 2024 (LEG 111).

Tom Birch Reynardson
MASS International Working Group