SCI has partnered with the United States Coast Guard to address the issue of seafarer abandonment. At a March 2008 meeting in Panama of the IMO/ILO Ad Hoc Expert Working Group on Liability and Compensation regarding Claims for Death, Personal Injury and Abandonment of Seafarers, the United States Delegation including Douglas Stevenson, proposed an international instrument to ensure shipowner financial responsibility. A voluntary guideline currently exists, but it cannot force compliance. The instrument and subsequent national legislation would seek to ensure that funding existed to cover the costs of care for seafarers in the event of abandonment. SCI will attend the next meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group, which takes place in Geneva, July 21-24, as a member of the ICMA delegation.

Douglas Stevenson represented Seamen’s Church Institute (SCI) at the semi-annual Executive Committee meeting of the International Christian Maritime Association (ICMA) in Bremen, Germany. Hosted by current ICMA president Hero Feenders and the German Seamen’s Mission, the meeting addressed a range of issues affecting the maritime ministry worldwide, from the importance of maintaining a current directory of seafarers’ centers, to recognizing the contributions of the ICMA standing delegation to the International Maritime Organization and International Labour Organization. Members of the German Seamen’s Mission, Sailor’s Society, Apostleship of the Sea, Dutch Seamen’s Mission, the North American Maritime Ministry Association, and SCI discussed future training programs for maritime chaplains worldwide, as well as upcoming regional conferences at which Douglas Stevenson will teach several workshops on seafarers’ rights. ICMA provides a critical forum for international seafarers’ organizations to share ideas and to use collective action to protect existing seafarers’ welfare provisions.

Paul Fisher joined the Center for Seafarers’ Rights as the second Charleston School of Law summer intern. A graduate of Vanderbilt University, Paul recently completed his first year of law school. He will spend four weeks in New York and receive academic credit, working on maritime law issues on behalf of merchant mariners. Seamen’s Church Institute and the Charleston School of Law began the externship program in 2007, to provide law students with practical training and exposure to public interest aspects of maritime practice.