What the platform is doing

In September 2008 the NGO Shipbreaking Platform through its member organization BELA (Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association) successfully filed a petition to the High Court to prevent the Greenpeace-listed toxic ship MT Enterprise from being dumped on the breaking beach of Chittagong. Six months later, the High Court issued rules to stop the import of toxic ships to Bangladesh and ordered the closure of all the  shipbreaking yards in Chittagong due to their lack of compliance with existing environmental and work safety regulations.

While the Ministry of Environment and Forest and the Ministry of Industries are working on providing clearer rules for ensuring safe and environmentally-sound shipbreaking, the Bangladesh Ship Breakers Association manages to keep toxic end-of-life ships coming into Bangladesh via temporary import permits.

In March 2011 BELA petitioned again the Bangladeshi High Court calling for the implementation of the ban on imports of ships containing hazardous materials and asking for legal guarantees so that the ships would be broken in a safe and environmentally-sound way.

In October 2011, the Ministry of Industries posted on its website a draft of “The Ship Breaking and Ship Recycling Rules 2011”. BELA analyzed the document and concluded that it “is neither compliant with the directives of the Judgment or subsequent orders given by the High Court in Writ Petition No. 7260 of 2008 nor is the same adequate in protecting environment and the labourers.” Further BELA remarked that the provisions of the draft “have totally ignored the legally binding Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal”.