Rescue Is Not Optional: The Duty to Render Assistance Under UNCLOS

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Created: 25 March 2025

International maritime law does not treat rescue as optional seamanship or moral discretion. It treats it as a legal duty, imposed on States and executed by the ship’s masters, triggered by known distress and governed by professionally intelligible limits. UNCLOS Article 98 requires every State to ensure that masters of ships flying its flag render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost, and proceed with all possible speed to rescue persons in distress when informed of their need, insofar as such action may reasonably be expected of the master and can be done without serious danger to the rescuing ship and those onboard.1

UNCLOS also makes rescue a governance obligation: States must promote adequate and effective search and rescue (SAR) services and cooperate regionally where appropriate.2 In practice, rescue is a chain—alert, assessment, response, recovery, care, and coordinated handover—capable of being evaluated after the event against objective standards of conduct.

Key Takeaways
  • Rescue is a legal duty executed by masters under flag-State obligation—not discretionary goodwill.
  • The duty is triggered by credible knowledge of distress and being in a position to assist; two built-in controls govern action: “no serious danger” and what is “reasonably expected.”
  • Compliance is a chain—alert, assessment, response, recovery, care, and coordinated handover—capable of evaluation against objective standards.
Definitions and Scope
  • Distress – credible indications that persons are in danger of being lost at sea.
  • Render assistance – take reasonable measures to preserve life once engaged, consistent with the safety of the vessel and those onboard.3
  • Proceed with all possible speed – prompt diversion and communications, within navigational and safety constraints.4
  • Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) / SAR system – the coordination mechanism under the SAR Convention that allocates responsibility and directs assets across SAR regions.5
  • Place of safety – a location where the rescue is considered complete—survivors are no longer in danger, their basic needs can be met, and arrangements can be made for their onward travel.6
What Article 98 Actually Requires

UNCLOS Article 98 codifies the duty to render assistance as a binding obligation implemented through the flag State. Although the provision appears in Part VII (“High Seas”), in practice it operates alongside the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, 1974 (SOLAS), as amended, and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR), which together supply the procedures and coordination architecture for modern rescue operations.

Subject to that safety qualifier, Article 98(1) requires States to ensure their masters:

  • To render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost; and
  • To proceed with all possible speed to the rescue of persons in distress when informed of their need, insofar as such action may reasonably be expected of the master.

Article 98 also includes a related duty: after a collision, the master must render assistance to the other ship and provide identifying information. This confirms that mutual aid is treated in UNCLOS as a baseline legal obligation of navigation.7

Finally, Article 98(2) completes the framework by assigning responsibility at the system level. States must promote adequate and effective search-and-rescue services and cooperate regionally where appropriate, ensuring that individual acts of assistance are supported by coordination mechanisms capable of bringing rescue operations to a lawful and timely conclusion.8

2) How the duty is operationalized: SOLAS, SAR, and IMO guidance

UNCLOS supplies the legal spine. The operational rules that masters and MRCCs apply in real time are reinforced by three instruments.

  • SOLAS Chapter V, Regulation 33 (distress situations). SOLAS provides that a master who is in a position to assist, upon receiving information from any source that persons are in distress at sea, is bound to proceed with all speed to their assistance.9 Where special circumstances justify not proceeding, the decision is not treated as casual discretion; it is an accountable professional judgment, one that should be supportable by concurrent reasons and communicated through the SAR coordination system.
  • International Convention on Maritime SAR. The SAR Convention establishes the organizational architecture: SAR regions, rescue coordination centers, and sub-centers, and the operating procedures to be followed during emergencies and SAR operations.10 It answers the “who coordinates?” question, so that response does not depend on happenstance, politics, or improvisation.
  • IMO MSC.167(78) Guidelines (treatment of persons rescued at sea). These Guidelines clarify the post-recovery phase: States should coordinate and cooperate so that masters are not left to shoulder indefinite responsibilities after embarking rescued persons, and the rescue chain can be concluded through timely arrangements.11
3)       When the duty is engaged—and the controlling legal limits

In operational terms, the duty is engaged when the master has reliable knowledge that persons are in distress at sea and the ship is in a position to assist. When that condition is met, UNCLOS expects action, subject to two controlling qualifiers:

  • No serious danger: assistance is required only insofar as the master can act without serious danger to the ship, crew, or passengers.
  • Reasonably expected: on the distress-response limb, proceeding is required only insofar as such action may reasonably be expected of the master.12

These are not legal gaps. They are the law’s way of incorporating professional seamanship into the standard of conduct. Heavy weather, fire risk, stability concerns, dangerous embarkations, mass-casualty dynamics, or security risks may shape what is “reasonably expected” at that moment, while still requiring immediate coordination so the SAR system can deploy appropriate assets.

4)       Illustrative Cases and Their Legal Significance
  • The MV Tampa (August 2001) — rescue is mandatory even when politics follow. In August 2001, a distressed vessel carrying asylum seekers was encountered near Christmas Island. The Norwegian container ship MV Tampa rescued the more or less 430 persons onboard under direction by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, illustrating the classic pattern of MRCC-directed assistance by a merchant vessel.13

Legal significance: The duty concerns the immediate preservation of life. The later dispute over disembarkation and reception was subject to significant political disagreement, but it does not dilute the first-order obligation to recover persons from peril. The case also exposes the systemic pressure point: unless States coordinate the post-rescue phase, compliance can become operationally and legally destabilizing for a merchant ship and its crew.

  • The Maersk Etienne (August–September 2020) — compliance can immobilize a ship without State coordination. In August 2020, the tanker Maersk Etienne rescued 27 persons from a distressed wooden dinghy that sank shortly after the rescue. The rescued persons remained onboard for 38 days before being transferred for disembarkation arrangements.14

Legal significance: The rescue itself is straightforward: compliance, rapid recovery, and safety of life are prioritized. The difficulty was concluding the rescue chain through timely State coordination. This is exactly the scenario addressed by the IMO Guidelines’ emphasis on effective arrangements to relieve masters of embarked persons and conclude rescues in an orderly manner.15

  • The 2011 “left-to-die” boat (March 2011) — when the chain breaks, the duty becomes an accountability question. A Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly report examined the 2011 “left-to-die” incident involving 72 people who departed the Libyan coast and later drifted for roughly two weeks, with only a small number surviving. The report highlights systemic concerns, including cooperation failures and responsibility gaps.16

Legal significance: This incident shows why Article 98 and the SAR regime exist: distress must not become “everyone’s knowledge and no one’s action.” Where the rescue chain fails, through breakdowns in coordination, misclassification of distress, or failures to intervene promptly, the duty to render assistance stops being an abstract norm and becomes an accountability question.

Conclusion

UNCLOS Article 98 is more than a maritime tradition. It sets a clear rule: when a ship becomes aware that people are in danger at sea, and assistance can be given without putting the ship, crew, or passengers in serious risk, help must be provided. UNCLOS places responsibility on States to ensure that masters of ships flying their flag follow this obligation.17

Rescue also depends on States doing their part. Effective search-and-rescue services, clear coordination, and reliable arrangements for disembarkation are necessary so that rescues are completed safely and promptly, without leaving ships in prolonged uncertainty at sea. The bottom line: masters must respond quickly and carefully, and record key decisions; States must coordinate decisively and bring rescues to a safe and proper conclusion. In a rules-based maritime environment, assisting people in distress is not optional; it is a basic standard of responsible conduct at sea.18

Footnotes
  1. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea art. 98, Dec. 10, 1982, 1833 U.N.T.S. 3, [hereinafter UNCLOS]. ↩︎
  2. International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, ch. V, reg. 33, Nov. 1, 1974, 1184 U.N.T.S. 278 (as amended), [hereinafter SOLAS Convention]. ↩︎
  3. UNCLOS art. 98 and 98(1)(a). ↩︎
  4. Id. art. 98(1)(b). ↩︎
  5. International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR), Apr. 27, 1979, 1405 U.N.T.S. 97 (hereinafter SAR Convention). ↩︎
  6. International Maritime Organization [IMO], Guidelines on the Treatment of Persons Rescued at Sea, IMO Res. MSC.167(78) ¶¶2.1–2.5 (May 20, 2004), [hereinafter IMO Guidelines]. ↩︎
  7. UNCLOS art. 98(1). ↩︎
  8. UNCLOS art. 98(2); see also SAR Convention. ↩︎
  9. International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue annex, chs. 2–3, Apr. 27, 1979, 1405 U.N.T.S. 97. ↩︎
  10. Id. ↩︎
  11. IMO Guidelines, IMO Res. MSC.167(78). ↩︎
  12. UNCLOS art. 98. ↩︎
  13. Australian Maritime Safety Authority, factual background and contemporaneous government records on the MV Tampa incident (Aug. 2001). ↩︎
  14. Shipowner statements and contemporaneous reporting documenting delayed disembarkation in the Maersk Etienne rescue (Aug.–Sept. 2020) (see, Reuters coverage Aug.–Sept. 2020). ↩︎
  15. IMO Guidelines, IMO Res. MSC.167(78). ↩︎
  16. Council of Europe Parl. Assembly, Lives Lost in the Mediterranean Sea: Who Is Responsible? Doc. 12895 ¶¶69–96 (2012); see also Forensic Oceanography, The Left-to-Die Boat (2012). ↩︎
  17. UNCLOS art. 98. ↩︎
  18. SAR Convention; IMO Guidelines, IMO Res. MSC.167(78). ↩︎

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