Flying the flag of convenience

September 1, 2014 4. Open Sea Port state control is supposed to be another regulatory brake on open registries. Various port authorities now issue a White List of flags judged to be responsible and a Black List of ones that are not. The Paris Memorandum of Understanding, an association of European port authorities, includes Liberia and Panama on its latest White List, as it has done for years. In the depths of the Black List, as you’d expect, swim North Korea, Libya, Sierra Leone, and Montenegro. The principle behind these lists is sound: port authorities have the power to detain unsafe ships in their ports. They home in on ships flagged to Black List countries, regularly detaining the rust buckets and unsafe ones, so that it becomes more trouble than it’s worth—and too expensive, with detention fees and lost income—to flag to poor or unstable states. All Excerpts From George, Rose. “Ninety Percent of Everything.” Henry Holt and Company. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.