In 1974, the Shipping Committee of UNCTAD adopted a resolution on the economic effects on international maritime transport of the presence or absence of a genuine link between ship and flag. This question had been in the work programme of the secretariat for some time, but had not been taken up. In part this was due to the pre-occupation of the secretariat with the Code of Conduct for liner conferences, in part because the development aspects of the matter were not evident. Initially, it seems, that the developing country interest in the matter arose from a suggestion that their inadequate participation in the transport of bulk cargoes was due, to a large extent, to the competition of ships registered in one or other of the open registry countries, the overwhelming majority of which were dry or liquid bulk carriers. A subsequent secretariat report supported this view, although it was longer on assertion than on supportive evidence. An inter-governmental group was set up. In 1978 it concluded that the expansion of the fleets of countries with open registers had adversely affected the development and competiveness of the fleets of countries which did not offer open-registry facilities, including those of developing countries, although the evidence submitted in the report to support this sweeping conclusion was, to say the least, weak. The report of the group was submitted to UNCTAD V in 1979.

At UNCTAD V the developing countries proposed to eliminate open registries by the establishment of an obligatory economic link between the ship and the flag-state; in this they were supported by the socialist countries. The OECD countries strongly opposed this proposition, an opposition which continued until early 1985. However, despite the opposition of the developed countries, a conference of plenipotentiaries was called and met for the first time in July 1984. At that time there were few who,