ICMA comes to New Zealand

AUCKLAND has earned itself the name "City of Sails" and, more recently, has become the home of the prestigious Americas Cup. It is fitting, then, that this year it will host the thirteenth meeting of the International Congress of Maritime Arbitrators.

ICMA 99, hosted by The Arbitrators' and Mediators' Institute of New Zealand Inc, will take place from March 1 to March 5 at the Aotea Centre, New Zealand's premier convention and performing arts centre.

Pick up the ICMA 99 registration brochure, and the first thing that will strike you about it is its informality, This, in a sense, is the great strength of ICMA. It has no mission statement, no structured body other than a steering committee, no membership. It has, moreover, resisted attempts over a number of years to formalise it, to give it a permanent secretariat and bylaws.

Thankfully, it has remained largely unchanged over the years, and one suspects that that is a major part of its appeal.

The maritime industries already have enough of the more formal type of organisations to keep them going for another millennium.

So what is in store for delegates visiting Auckland in March? The congress is being opened by His Excellency The Rt Hon Sir Michael Hardie Boys, governor-general of New Zealand. On the opening morning, The Hon Justice B H Giles will give the Cedric Barclay Memorial Lecture, which has become such a feature of recent ICMA gatherings.

There are ten business sessions over the course of the next three days, and the proceedings conclude with the congress dinner at the National Maritime Museum. True to form, and true to the spirit of ICMA's constitution, there is a range of pre- and post-conference tours on offer, and a positive bagful of what are called 'accompanying partner tour options'. (Am I to assume from this that 'spouse programme' has now become politically incorrect?).

So, ICMA 99. In Auckland. Not bad for an organisation that began life as an impromptu idea conceived, we are told, on the Moscow subway. Cedric Barclay would have loved it.