International trade in large amounts of commodities resulted in the recent growth of the shipping
industry. With larger ships being constructed to meet land based demands for various types of
commodities combined with the unpredictable and often perilous conditions at sea, the risk of a
shipwreck arising becomes more likely. Not only do these wrecks pose a danger to the
environment and to navigation but also, in the event of the shipowner escaping liability by
abandoning the wreck for instance, the state affected by the wreck finds itself financially
burdened by the costs involved in having the wreck removed. Moreover, an affected state cannot
intervene and impose conditions to the shipowner to have a wreck removed if it occurred in its
exclusive economic zone because the state’s jurisdiction is limited to preserving natural
resources. Thus, despite drifting cargo and the ship itself posing a hazard to coastal states, they
had no authority to intervene and issue a wreck removal notice.
Recognising these safety concerns and lacunae in international law, the International Maritime
Organisation formulated the Nairobi International Convention on the Removal of Wrecks, 2007,
(“Nairobi Convention”) which was aimed at governing the regulation of removing wrecks whilst
imposing strict liability on the shipowner, subject to the other liability Conventions and
limitation of liability. However, after a survey was conducted by the Comitè Maritime
International it was also established that national laws of many states such as the United
Kingdom (“UK”) and South Africa were inadequate to enforce liability claims for costs incurred
in removing a wreck. As a result, the Convention allows contracting states to apply the
provisions of the Convention to their territorial sea.
This dissertation will discuss relevant provisions of the Nairobi Convention and illustrate how it
has been implemented and consequently reformed the law of the United Kingdom. The
dissertation will then analyse the implementation strategy which enforces the Convention in the
UK, with the aim of providing a suggestion of how South Africa should enforce the Convention
into its national laws. This will lead to an assessment of the current legislative framework
governing wreck removal in South Africa with the aim of establishing whether the law is need of
reform and how this should be facilitated. / Thesis (LL.M.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/11051 |
| Date | 12 August 2014 |
| Creators | Ramsakkan, Yinita. |
| Contributors | Surbun, Vishal. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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