In just over a month shipping will find out who its next chief regulator will be with voting for the next secretary-general of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) scheduled for July 18, and the winner set to take the reins from incumbent Kitack Lim from January 1 next year.
Seven people from four continents have thrown their hats in the ring for the role at the London-based United Nations body including Nancy Karigithu, Kenya’s ambassador and special envoy for maritime and the blue economy, who has served as a delegate at the IMO for the past 20 years.
“Harmonising global compliance must become the main objective of IMO as a whole,” Karigithu tells Maritime CEO, explaining that many developing countries find compliance with some IMO conventions daunting to ratify and domesticate.
“IMO cannot operate in a vacuum and must therefore move with time, space and technology. I would thus set out to ensure that the organisation becomes proactive in lieu of its traditional role of being reactive,” Karigithu says.
The secretary-general candidate says Kenya, her country, has had a long-standing reputation in diplomacy for being a “safe pair of hands” at both the Africa Union and within the United Nations, something Karigithu aims to bring into the IMO leadership.
“As a seasoned maritime practitioner with vast experience from the global south, I believe I will build the bridge between the north and south on contemporary global issues that currently divide IMO member states,” she says.
Watch out too for how Karigithu will aim to improve transparency at the UN body if she wins next month, as well as trying to fix shipping’s gender mismatch.
