There’s a lot more attention being paid to Flag States for shipping, and what kind of job they’re doing to police their members. Much of the attention is due to the abuse of flag state status by companies and owners who want to avoid being caught up in sanctions.
Sanction regimes from major powers, US, UK, EU Paris MOU, and Tokyo MOU, are getting more strict, and exposing companies to much more risk. However, if flag states don’t proactively enforce rules, they could attract ships that do not intend to play by the general international rules.
Some of these rules deal with insurance and protection for cargo owners. Some deal with care of mariners, and some with proper behavior in cargo handling, such as ship-to-ship transfers and carbon emissions in protected international spaces.
Here we highlight an example of lax enforcement turning into stricter rules. In this article, Cameroon, an African nation which operates a ship registry that has grown very fast recently, is going to purge the registry of ships that are sanctioned by the three sanctioning groups. Cameroon has also reportedly stopped new registration of ships known to be sanctioned.
Owners of those ships will need to move them to another registry. There have been frequent accidents involving ships with Cameroon registry; the average age of the fleet registered there is 32.7 years. This is much older than many operators choose to run ships.
Sam Chambers February 13, 2026
https://splash247.com/cameroon-clamps-down-on-shadow-fleet-as-flag-purge-begins/
Shipping rules are principally controlled by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) though other UN agencies play a role. In the next article, the IMO announced a campaign to combat fraud in ship registration. Fraud is a tactic often used by shadow fleet members to get around rules. These ships will claim to be registered in a flag registry when they are not. Sometimes the claimed nation does not even have a registry.
Flagging a ship in a nation’s registry makes shipboard conduct subject to that nation’s laws. Even when a ship is properly registered with a flag, there could be gaps between IMO standards, agreed to by most nations, and national laws. One prominent area is labor rules for mariners, which sometimes are violated by ships’ management.
The IMO can conduct audits of registries’ practice, and the consistency of national and international laws. It’s planning to step up those audits. This will make it harder for shadow shipping to continue practices that do not meet international shipping standards.
Published Feb 12, 2026 11:06 PM by The Maritime Executive
https://maritime-executive.com/article/imo-ramps-up-campaign-to-close-flag-state-enforcement-gap
Update 2/17/2026:
Madagascar, which has no registry, reports multiple ships falsely claiming it as a flag state.
Sam Chambers, February 17, 2026
https://splash247.com/madagascar-exposes-fraudulent-flag-scam/
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