In October 2013 the support ship C-Retriever
was boarded and two out of the crew were taken hostage. According to Courthouse News Service one of the
two, the Captain Thomas, now sues the company for not doing enough to prevent
the attack.
The attack came after other attacks on ships
and personnel and threats of more attacks as well as after reports on security
weaknesses such as how the communication was performed. According to the
captain ECO did not implement sufficient security measures to deal with the
risks.
According to the “Ship security challenges in
high-risk areas: Manageable or insurmountable?” (presented on this blog earlier)
preparing for such maritime security threats is not easy, but possible. It is
not possible to entirely avoid risks, but given that there are high risks in
the operations area the ship operators must analyze them and implement suitable
measures of protection. How much protection that is needed is given by the
level of the risks, but also by the costs of the measures. But operations where
the risks exceed a maximum level (which at least for safety is quantified by
IMO (2000)) must be stopped. According to the
International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) “It is important
to recognize that the company is responsible for identifying the risks
associated with its particular ships, operations and trade. It is no longer
sufficient to rely on compliance with generic statutory and class requirements,
and with general industry guidance. … It is for the company to choose methods
appropriate to its organizational structure, its ships and its trades. The
methods may be more or less formal, but they must be systematic if assessment
and response are to be complete and effective, and the entire exercise should
be documented so as to provide evidence of the decision-making process" (IACS 2012).
Therefore, in my mind the lawsuit comes down to
if and how the company used the information about the threats in a structured
analysis and then actually implemented suitable controls (and updated the
analysis and controls as there were new information and the situation changed). However, the analysis must also take into account how different measures affect the crews', but also the threats, perception of the security measures according to the figure below.
Especially off West Africa this is not an easy task!
 |
| Cyclic version of the ship security risk
management. Of extra importance is dependencies between internal and external conditions and the effect of risk controls (Liwång et al. 2014). |
Also, unfortunately not that many know how a suitable
ship security risk management should look like!
Liwång, H., Sörenson, K., & Österman, C. (2014). Ship security challenges in high risk areas: Manageable or insurmountable? WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs.
IACS. (2012). A Guide to Risk Assessment in Ship
Operations. London: International Association of Classification societies.
Liwång, H., Sörenson, K., & Österman, C. (2014). Ship security challenges in high risk areas: Manageable or insurmountable? WMU Journal of Maritime Affairs.
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