The NGO Platform on Shipbreaking works to raise awareness and prevent the human rights abuses and the environmental injustice provoked when toxic wastes on board end-of-life vessels are freely traded without restraint in the global market place.
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PRESS RELEASE
Developing Countries Disagree that Hong Kong Convention Can Prevent Global Dumping of Toxic Ships on Their Beaches
Developing countries call on Basel Convention to become more active on end-of-life ships
Cartagena, Colombia. October 21, 2011 – At the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention, in an effort to prevent toxic ships from being dumped on the beaches of developing countries, African nations declared that they wanted the Basel Convention to retain its competency over end-of-life ships and reinvigorate the Basel Convention's work in this regard.
Developing nations, legal experts and NGOs that attended the meeting all voiced the concern that the International Maritime Organization’s Hong Kong Convention will not stop hazardous wastes such as asbestos, PCBs, residue oils and heavy metals from being exported to the poorest communities and most desperate workers in developing counties. The Hong Kong Convention, which was adopted in 2009, but has not yet been ratified by a single country, has no intention of minimizing the movement of toxic ships to developing countries.
Currently the 1989 Basel Convention is the only legal instrument on transboundary movements of waste, and the only legal tool developing countries can successfully use to stop toxic ships from entering their territorial waters.
The developing countries’ statement was supported by the Basel Action Network and the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, a global coalition of labor rights and environmental organizations dedicated to promoting safe and environmentally sound ship recycling and preventing toxic ships from disproportionately burdening developing countries.
“The Hong Kong Convention is radically different from the Basel Convention as it puts the costs and liabilities of waste management on the importing state and not the polluter – who in this case is the ship owner”, said Ingvild Jenssen, Director of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. “The Hong Kong Convention does not even prohibit the dangerous beaching method, a substandard method of ship dismantling whereby ships are broken up on tidal beaches by untrained and unprotected workers, causing severe pollution, injuries and deaths.”
The Probo Koala, now re-named the Gulf Jash, a ship which caused an environmental and human rights disaster in the Ivory Coast in August 2006, has been sold for scrapping on the infamous ship breaking beaches of Chittagong in Bangladesh. Environmental, human rights and labour rights organisations represented by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform fear that the Probo Koala will be allowed to perpetuate its deadly legacy by being broken down in unsafe and environmentally damaging conditions. The NGOs call on the government of Bangladesh to refuse the import of the death ship and say no to illegal toxic waste trade.
It is expected that the Probo Koala contains many tonnes of hazardous asbestos, PCBs, toxic paints, fuel and chemical residues. Currently the ship is located in Vietnam.
The board members of the Platform and staff met in Oslo, Norway from May 11 to May 15. An exhibition featuring pictures of shipbreaking yards taken in Chittagong, Bangladesh, by Bangladeshi photographer Saiful Huq Omi was featured at DogA, an architecture and design venue, during the same week.
“The incentive for it to be a success is the promise to get compensation", said Ritwick Dutta, lawyer at LIFE and member of the board of the NGO Shipbreaking Platform. "If they want to complain but that this would only mean causing their employer to close down, they won’t do it. They want the money to help them or their village.”
A six-million-dollar aid package from the Norwegian development agency NORAD was criticised by the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, a coalition of international expert organisations on environment, labor and development issues. The Platform met with NORAD on May 12 in Oslo and voiced concern that unless NORAD modifies its aid package from what is currently planned and instead undertakes activities to quickly phase out toxic ships from arriving in Bangladesh and broken down on tidal beaches, they will simply be greenwashing a human rights and environmental disaster.
“Norway must face its global responsibilities as a global leader in environment, human rights and shipping,” said Platform director Ingvild Jenssen. “Indeed all of these causes can be served, but that will not happen, if the Norwegian project is limited to training workers on safeguards rather than also establishing a model shipbreaking facility in Bangladesh.”
(This press release was sent by Platform member organisation Bellona to the Norwegian press)