Flag of Convenience - Port State Targeting

Port State Targeting

In 1978, a number of European countries agreed in The Hague to audit labour conditions on board vessels vis-a-vis the rules of the International Labour Organization. To this end, in 1982 the "Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control" (Paris MOU) was established, setting port state control standards for what is now twenty-six European countries and Canada.

Several other regional Memoranda Of Understanding have been established based on the Paris model, including the "Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control in the Asia-Pacific Region", typically referred to as the "Tokyo MOU", and organizations for the Black Sea, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, and Latin America. The Tokyo and Paris organizations generate, based on deficiencies and detentions, black-, white-, and grey-lists of flag states. The US Coast Guard, which handles port state control inspections in the US, maintains a similar target list for underperforming flag states. As of 2009, fourteen of the thirty-one flags of convenience listed by the ITF are targeted for special enforcement by the countries of the Paris and Tokyo MOUs or U.S. Coast Guard: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Cambodia, the Cayman Islands, North Korea, Georgia, Honduras, Lebanon, Malta, Mongolia, Panama, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.