Hopes are mounting that Bangladesh’s commitment to accede to the Hong Kong Convention for the Safe & Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (HKC) this year will finally be enough to mandate the regulation internationally.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed pledged to try her best to ratify the HKC at a meeting last month with her Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, in Tokyo.
But the future of the convention, which was rubber-stamped by the International Maritime Organization in 2009, still hangs in the balance because of the complex and increasingly difficult-to-achieve requirements for it to enter into force.
