2.3 At its seventy-eighth session, the Maritime
Safety Committee (MSC) adopted pertinent amendments to chapter V of the International Convention
for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) and to chapters 2, 3 and 4 of
the Annex to the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue
Convention (SAR Convention). These amendments are expected to enter
into force on 1 July 2006. At the same session the MSC adopted the
current guidelines; these amendments provide for the development of
such guidelines. The purpose of these amendments and the current guidelines
is to help ensure that persons in distress are assisted, while minimizing
the inconvenience to assisting ships and ensuring the continued integrity
of SAR services.
2.4 Specifically, paragraph 1-1 of SOLAS regulation V/33 and paragraph 3.1.9 of
the Annex to the SAR Convention, as amended, impose upon Governments
an obligation to co-ordinate and co-operate to ensure that masters
of ships providing assistance by embarking persons in distress at
sea are released from their obligations with minimum further deviation
from the ship's intended voyage.
2.5 As realized by the MSC in adopting the amendments,
the intent of new paragraph 1-1 of SOLAS regulation
V/33 and paragraph 3.1.9 of the Annex to the International
Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue, 1979, as amended, is to
ensure that in every case a place of safety is provided within a reasonable
time. The responsibility to provide a place of safety, or to ensure
that a place of safety is provided, falls on the Government responsible
for the SAR region in which the survivors were recovered.
2.6 Each case, however, can involve different
circumstances. These amendments give the responsible Government the
flexibility to address each situation on a case-by-case basis, while
assuring that the masters of ships providing assistance are relieved
of their responsibility within a reasonable time and with as little
impact on the ship as possible.
2.7 Some comments on relevant international law
are set out at the appendix.