The actual practice of shipbreaking is in fact 'export of hazardous waste from developed to developing countries' like Bangladesh and China. And thus a clear violation of the Basel Ban Amendment to the Basel Convention. But the shipping industry resists the application of the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban provisions for shipbreaking. Application means they would have to notify all competent authorities of their plan to dismantle the ship. It also means that the ship is only allowed to be broken at a green shipbreaking facility and that the ship owners have to fully decontaminate their end-of-life vessels prior to export.

Non-transparent
Shipbreaking could get away with it until now. Because the nature of ships is unique and the ownership non-transparent. Also the final destination -shipbreaking - of an end-of-life vessel can be hidden. Nevertheless, the actual shipbreaking practice simply is 'illegal' under this Basel Regime.

Legal issues
In January 2002 the Basel Parties for the first time debated on the legal issues of old ships. They agreed in general that the Basel Convention is applicable to ships-for-scrap due to the constituents of old ships. These contain hazardous materials like asbestos and PCBs.

Ships-for-scrap
The Basel Convention is about movements of waste between territories. Shipping and sea vessels continuously border different areas of jurisdiction. Therefore an amendment of the Basel Convention is needed. It should be better suited for this form of hazardous waste trade. Basel Action Network and Greenpeace presented a paper on this issue at the Basel Convention in January 2002: 'Shipbreaking and the Legal Obligations Under the Basel Convention'.

International cooperation
The Basel Parties agreed that cooperation on this issue of several international organisations is needed: IMO, London Convention and UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas). Their input was used in another meeting of the Basel Parties, but no real progress was made.

Technical guidelines
In December 2002 the Basel Parties adopted technical guidelines for environmentally sound management of the full and partial dismantling of ships. The guidelines are advisory in nature for shipbreaking nations. They mean to improve the environmental performance of facilities involved in the breaking of ships. Download the complete guidelines here

Waste
In November 2003 the Open Ended Working Group (OEWG 2) of the Basel Convention recognized end-of-life vessels as waste. This was a real breakthrough! After a week of intensive negotiations the OEWG agreed that a ship can become waste as meant in article 2 of the Basel Convention and at the same time - according to another international law - be considered a ship.

Turkish court
Another important event was the verdict of a Turkish judge in April 2004. The court of Izmir declared that the import of ships for scrap containing asbestos or other dangerous materials onboard was illegal. The Basel secretariat warned the parties to the treaty about the consequences: export of ships for scrap to Turkey is a violation of the Basel Convention. Before the Izmir court verdict, judges in India, Belgium and the Netherlands ruled in similar ways.

Historical decision
In October 2004 the Basel Convention took a historical decision: ships can be considered toxic wast under international law. That means an end-of-life vessel can not leave a country without permission of the importing state. Furthermore the 163 signatories to the treaty must assure that shipbreaking is performed in an environmentally sound manner and minimise the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes onboard the ships. Download the proposal of the Working Group on Ship Dismantling here

Work to do
Unfortunately the international law still contains several loopholes, despite the historical decision of October 2004. Ship owners can still evade the regulations. That's why the parties to the Basel Convention will work on closing the loopholes in the next few years. One: how can we prevent ship owners to 'decide' on the open sea that they will sail to a shipbreaking beach? Two: what state is primarily responsible, what state will we point out as being the exporting state? Will that be the port state, the flag state or the state in which the ship owner is based? Download the proposals of Greenpeace and BAN/Greenpeace to the meeting of the Basel Convention in July 2005.