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IMO's Tsunami Maritime Relief Activities & Aid
As global attention in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami tragedy turns towards the massive job of repairing long-term damage and restoring battered infrastructures, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is playing its part in co-ordinating efforts to attend to the maritime infrastructure in the affected regions.
IMO Secretary-General Efthimios E. Mitropoulos has stressed the strategic importance of ensuring that ports, navigational aids and other key elements of the maritime infrastructure are in effective working order as soon as possible, both to facilitate the medium and long-term recovery of the affected areas and to ensure that short-term aid arriving by sea can do so efficiently and in safety.
The organisation has initiated consultations with organisations such as the World Meteorological Organization, the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO), and the International Association of Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) concerning priority actions aimed at the safety of shipping, such as the provision of advice and warnings on the availability and reliance of soundings, navaids and other elements of the maritime infrastructure in the affected areas.
The organisation is also in contact with various bodies in the United Nations system with respect to possible short term and medium term activities.
In addition, the Secretary-General has established a fund (the "Tsunami Maritime Relief Fund") through which the shipping industry's direct financial and in-kind aid for the victims of the disaster might be co-ordinated and has written to all non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in consultative status with IMO drawing it to their attention and encouraging their generous contribution.
In the medium to longer term, it plans to field needs-assessment missions to affected countries, both to assess the situation and to establish appropriate follow-up activities, such as re-building their fishing capacity, and also to prioritize IMO responses. The organization will seek to co-ordinate these activities with other agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank, as appropriate. Steps will also be taken to assess any action that may have been taken by Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centres in the region in response to (or in the absence of) information about the earthquake and tsunami and the possibility of more effective use being made of the maritime safety networks established by IMO to disseminate other information will be investigated.
In the immediate aftermath of the Boxing Day tragedy, Mitropoulos wrote, on behalf of the organisation to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and to the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to express the maritime community's sadness at the enormity of the disaster and to offer all available assistance in support of the wider UN efforts to bring aid and comfort to those in need.
Its efforts to assist in the wider United Nations campaign to bring relief and reconstruction to the regions devastated by the Indian Ocean tsunami received a major boost early January, when the International Mobile Satellite Organization (IMSO) announced that, in co-operation with Inmarsat, it will make available up to 1000 digital land-mobile satellite communication terminals, free of charge, to the Secretary-General of IMO, for long term disaster response and relief purposes in the south Asia region.
The terminals are to be supported with a programme of basic user training to enable them to be brought into use as quickly and effectively as possible, and IMSO also hopes to negotiate a package of subsidised airtime to ease the early use of the terminals
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