Joji MORISHITA, PhD 
Los Delfines Hotel, venue for IWC69 in Lima, Peru. (via Wikimedia Images)
For IWC69, like its immediate predecessor, just meeting was a challenge, and not everyone made it ー including the chairman. With other administrative and financial struggles, can it survive?
Beginning with procedural challenges, let's break down the issues.
Second of 5 parts
First: IWC69 Report: Has the International Whaling Commission become a Zombie?
Third: IWC69 Report: Catch Quotas and Sanctuary
Fourth: IWC69 Report: Nonbinding Resolutions
Conclusion: IWC69 Report: What the Results Show Us
Participation: Where's the Chair?
As has been a problem in past IWC meetings, representatives from many developing countries, especially those that support sustainable use, were unable to participate in the meeting. They could not obtain or were not issued visas in time.
Following this unwelcome trend, IWC Chair, Mr Amadou Telivel Diallo of Guinea was unable to obtain a visa to enter Peru. Therefore, he was unable to participate in the IWC69 meeting. Because of this emergency, the Vice-Chair, Dr Nick Gales of Australia, acted as Acting Chair of the meeting.
Travelers with passports from developed countries, including Japan, are accustomed to entering many countries visa-free or being issued a visa on the spot upon entry. Even when a visa is required in advance of entry, it has become common in recent years to apply for visas online. Thus, this visa issue may not be felt as much in developed countries.
However, participants from many African countries that support sustainable use at the IWC must go directly in person to the embassy or consulate of that year's host country to apply for visas. (In the case of IWC69, it was Peru.) On occasion, their country has no host country embassy or consulate. In such cases, a country's IWC representatives must go to a third country to find an embassy or consulate and apply for a visa. (For example, Morocco or France, in the case of Guinea.)
Not an Organizational Priority
Furthermore, visas are not issued immediately upon application. Often, the applicant has to wait several days or even longer before the application is approved. This would require obtaining a visa well in advance of the IWC meeting, which would mean going to the country where the embassy of the host country of the meeting is located to obtain a visa in advance, returning home, and then making a trip to participate in the IWC meeting. It would be a huge financial burden.
The IWC Secretariat promises to work with the host country to ensure that visas are issued as soon as possible for each IWC meeting. However, in many developing countries, complicated and burdensome visa issuance systems persist.
While not all cases are related to visa issues, only 65 of the 88 IWC member countries participated in the IWC69 meeting. More than a quarter of the member countries did not participate. This trend has been noticeable since around 2010. Besides the visa issue, the author's impression is that for many countries, the IWC has become an international organization where their participation is not a priority. (And therefore no budget is allocated for paying dues and travel expenses.)
Weaponize or Not? Quorum Rules
The opening topic of discussion at IWC 69 was the issue of quorum. This determines the number of state parties required to be present for the formal holding of a meeting and decision-making. In other words, a quorum is a mechanism to prevent a small number of parties from formally convening the meeting and making decisions. It is a democratic procedure to ensure that as many parties as possible participate in discussions and decision-making.
As well, a quorum can also be interpreted as a mechanism to prevent large, developed countries with human, organizational, and financial resources from controlling international politics and organizations.
Why was such an important, but also procedural, quorum issue on the agenda at the beginning of IWC69? For that, we need to look back at the discussion surrounding the proposal to establish the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary at IWC68 in 2022 and its outcome.
At IWC 68 in 2022, Latin American countries also submitted a proposal to establish a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary and lobbied strongly for its adoption. The proposal provides for a ban on commercial whaling in the South Atlantic. (Since the current moratorium on commercial whaling has no quota for commercial whaling worldwide, it is a completely redundant proposal.)
If passed, it would be a legally binding amendment to the Schedule to the Convention. Therefore, it requires three-fourths (75%) of the countries voting for or against it to be adopted. For more than 20 years since Brazil announced its intention to submit a proposal for the establishment of a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary in 1998, the proposal has been repeatedly discussed and voted down. Meanwhile, the number of votes in favor of establishing a sanctuary has become close to three-fourths.
An Equity Problem for Developing Countries
At IWC 68, 57 of the 88 signatory countries attended the meeting. According to the preliminary reading of the votes, 40 of them were expected to vote in favor of a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary. The remaining 17 were expected to oppose it. However, only 11 of the 17 countries had voting rights. So, if a vote was held, the proposal to establish the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary would have been adopted. (40 out of 51 voting countries, or 78.4% voted "for" the proposal.)
Relevant to the matter, under the IWC rules, the right to vote is suspended if a country fails to pay its dues. Many of the pro-sustainable use countries (whaling supporters) were opposed to the establishment of the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary. However, they were developing countries that had difficulty paying their dues. Meanwhile, all 40 countries in favor were eligible to vote.
The pro-sustainable-use side therefore devised a strategy of not entering the room during the meeting session in which the proposal to establish the South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary was to be voted on. As a result, only 41 countries were present at the meeting. That was less than the quorum of 44 countries, and the chair decided that the vote could not take place. Norway, which opposed the sanctuary, was present on the floor and ready to point out the lack of a quorum if necessary.
Latin America's Calculus
The Latin American countries strongly objected to this situation. They argued that the quorum was met because the pro-sustainable-use countries were present at IWC 68, even though they were not on the floor at the time, and that it was undemocratic to block the vote in this way. Although IWC Rule of Procedure B.1 provides that "Attendance by a majority of the members of the Commission shall constitute a quorum," it was open to interpretation whether this referred to attendance at the meeting or physical presence in the room where the voting took place.
Furthermore, it was not clear whether the quorum was for the IWC meetings to be established formally or for the conduct of the individual votes. Latin American countries argued that since the IWC meeting was established, voting was possible ー even if an insufficient number of countries were present on the floor.
Ultimately, in response to various discussions on the interpretation and operation of the quorum, it was decided that the existing Working Group on Operational Effectiveness (WG-OE) would organize and review the issues before the IWC69 meeting. It left the quorum issue for consideration and resolution at the beginning of IWC69, before the other agenda items were discussed. Against this background, the issue of quorum was considered an important item on the opening agenda of IWC69.
Who 'Counts' and Who Doesn't
In response to this decision, the WG-OE proceeded with its study and submitted a well-defined report to IWC69. The report presented several options after studying examples of quorum provisions in other international organizations. These included the option of dividing the quorum into holding a formal meeting and voting on a decision and the option of clarifying the "attendance" provision.
Furthermore, the WG-OE, considering the importance of this matter, proposed a policy of seeking consensus agreement and maintaining the status quo if no consensus was reached. However, according to the IWC's Rules of Procedure, amendments such as the definition of quorum could be made by a simple majority vote.
No country challenged this consensus requirement at IWC 69. Although various views and positions were expressed for and against the options presented by the WG-OE, no consensus was reached on any of the proposed changes. Furthermore, Norway and others expressed opposition to any change in the Rules of Procedure regarding the quorum itself. Therefore, the current Rules of Procedure remain in place.
There was a precedent for blocking a proposal to establish a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary using the Rules of Procedure at IWC68: IWC63, which was held in 2011 on the island of Jersey, a British Crown Territory. At that time, a modification of the quorum rule was also discussed. However, the issue was ultimately mooted without further consideration and the current quorum rule remained.
This article was first published on Whaling Today, a website featuring the history, culture and other information about whales and Japanese sustainable whaling. Read the Series: IWC69 Report
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The series is published in cooperation with the Institute of Cetacean Research in Japan. Let us hear your thoughts in our comments section.
Author: Joji Morishita, PhD
Former Professor, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology
The views and policies expressed in this article are the author's own and may differ from those of the Japanese government. Any misunderstandings or errors contained herein are the sole responsibility of the author.
