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| WMU Graduation 2024 Address by Professor Maximo Q. Mejia, Jr |
More than 70 percent of the earth is covered by ocean, an immense source of life. The ocean provides both food and many of the natural resources that sustain us. The ocean serves as the primary conveyor of the transport of goods around the world. It is a natural and essential way tied to the sustainability of the survival of both human beings and other species.
The World Maritime University (WMU) is a unique, global, maritime and ocean institution founded by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). The IMO works with many institutions that are affiliated with the UN, as is the WMU. In its vision the WMU continues to emphasize the UNSDGs and feels particularly well positioned to work on environmental sustainability.
World Maritime University (WMU)
The WMU was founded in 1983 by the IMO as a leading institution for maritime and oceanic postgraduate education, research, global capacity building. Its aim is to ensure safe, secure and efficient shipping on clean oceans, while promoting sustainable development. The WMU headquarters in Malmö, Sweden, offer MSc, PhD and Postgraduate Diploma Programmes as well as Executive Education on maritime and oceanic affairs. In addition, a limited number of MSc programmes are offered in Shanghai and Dalian, China.
WMU
On 2nd November 2024 at 13.30 hours, as a UNICEF retiree, I had the honour to attend the 41st WMU Graduation Ceremony, this year for the Class of 2024. The Graduation, an impressive event, was held in the ‘Malmö Live’ Concert Hall. The wind and brass band of the Royal Fire Brigade festively set off the Graduation Ceremony with a triumphant fanfare. Music by classical composers followed. Then it was time for the graduands’ Arrival Procession.
This was followed by the speeches from the podium by the WMU, the IMO Secretary-General and other dignitaries. The WMU President, Professor Maximo Q. Mejia, Jr, in his Opening Remarks to the graduands included a thought on our interconnectedness
“…all of you are familiar with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. All of you understand the intricate workings of our maritime and oceanic world, and how each aspect of our endeavours inevitably impacts others…”.
Thereupon followed the much-awaited conferring of Degrees and Awards by the Chancellor of the WMU. This awesome programme took a good two hours to complete.
The World Maritime University (WMU) is a unique, global, maritime and ocean institution founded by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). The IMO works with many institutions that are affiliated with the UN, as is the WMU. In its vision the WMU continues to emphasize the UNSDGs and feels particularly well positioned to work on environmental sustainability.
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| The Bridge |
The WMU was founded in 1983 by the IMO as a leading institution for maritime and oceanic postgraduate education, research, global capacity building. Its aim is to ensure safe, secure and efficient shipping on clean oceans, while promoting sustainable development. The WMU headquarters in Malmö, Sweden, offer MSc, PhD and Postgraduate Diploma Programmes as well as Executive Education on maritime and oceanic affairs. In addition, a limited number of MSc programmes are offered in Shanghai and Dalian, China.
WMU
On 2nd November 2024 at 13.30 hours, as a UNICEF retiree, I had the honour to attend the 41st WMU Graduation Ceremony, this year for the Class of 2024. The Graduation, an impressive event, was held in the ‘Malmö Live’ Concert Hall. The wind and brass band of the Royal Fire Brigade festively set off the Graduation Ceremony with a triumphant fanfare. Music by classical composers followed. Then it was time for the graduands’ Arrival Procession.
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| Arrival Procession |
“…all of you are familiar with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. All of you understand the intricate workings of our maritime and oceanic world, and how each aspect of our endeavours inevitably impacts others…”.
Thereupon followed the much-awaited conferring of Degrees and Awards by the Chancellor of the WMU. This awesome programme took a good two hours to complete.
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| Grads |
Then everyone gathered in rooms adjacent to the Concert Hall for the Reception and mingling. Bubbly drinks and a meal afoot were offered. It was a joyous moment when the invitees, like me and others, had the opportunity to interact and be sociable with the graduands and also with their family members, mostly spouses and children, who had travelled to Malmö for this prestigious occasion. Surely, a significant lifelong memory, underpinned as it is by rigorous studies and academic achievements.
The WMU’s first location in Citadel Street is fondly remembered by alumni. Yet after 32 years there, more convenient space became needed. Malmö thus provided the WMU with its current location in the Old Harbour Master’s Building from 1911 in the central Fiskehamns Street. The Old Harbour Master’s Building is eye-catching with its style of Swedish National Romantic. A fine landmark that used to be the seat of the Swedish Maritime Administration. With WMU now on its premises this historic building became reconnected with its maritime history.
However, from the outset it was known that the Harbour Master’s Building was too small to accommodate yearly about 200 WMU students. An architectural competition led to the selection of the design for an addition-building. Inaugurated in 2015, the extension’s spectacular design of freely shaped modernistic angles is a bold architectural statement meant to connect the old city with the new city near former docklands. Locals named it the ‘Hinge’.
The ‘Hinge’ incorporates a new auditorium, a library-hub of rich maritime knowledge, multiple research labs, video-conferencing facilities and more. The old building and the new ‘Hinge’ stand not only side by side but are in an architectural way cleverly and functionally integrated with one another. For example, a lecture hall in the extension is supported at its back by the original brick wall of the old building.
The WMU academic year of 14 months is divided into three semesters where each contains several study modules.
Currently nearly 200 students are enrolled at the WMU in Malmö. They, and the WMU alumni, form a global maritime and oceans network worldwide of more than 6,000 professionals. Each year, about 50 countries are represented within the incoming class. In the Class of 2024, 35 percent of graduands were women, even more in the MSc programme with 40 percent women.
With an average age of 35 years, WMU students are mid-career professionals from maritime and ocean occupations. The basic entry requirement is a BA degree. Non-academic applicants with approved professional qualifications or who have sufficient professional experience (defined as responsible, managerial experience over a period of at least five years’ duration) may also be considered. Competence in English is required.
The majority of the WMU students in Malmö live at the campus of the Henrik Smith Residence located three km from the WMU building which is reached by bus service. The international network the students establish while living on campus benefits further from the tight faculty friendships they foster during the studies.
The WMU alumni hold positions of prominence around the world in ministries, as heads of maritime academies and naval organizations, as directors of shipping companies and ports, and many represent their home countries at the IMO and in international organizations and other fora.
Faculty
The WMU’s specialized and internationally renowned faculty lecture and run the study programmes while guiding the students. Visiting Guest Lecturers share with the students their connections with international and national maritime administrations and with the commercial shipping sectors and their alliances.
Finance
The WMU is fully funded by voluntary contributions for its functioning. Governments, shipping industry, NGOs, civil society, private sector and private donors join the Government of Sweden and the City of Malmö in continued provision of support to the WMU.
The WMU President, Professor Maximo Q. Mejia, Jr, ended his words to the graduands with an appeal:
“… I charge you today to always cherish the great benefits you have gained from this incredible academic programme that not only offered you advanced studies in maritime and ocean affairs, but also afforded you the opportunity to work and live together as global citizens in the true United Nations spirit of peace, understanding, harmony, and a shared resolve to make our world better place…”.
Addition
WMU study programmes for the academic year 2023-2024
GRADUATES -
Maritime Safety and Environmental Administration
Ocean Sustainability, Governance and Management
Port Management
Shipping Managements and Logistics
Maritime Safety and Environmental Management
International Transport and Logistics
DISTANCE LEARNING COMPLETED: LLM and postgraduate diplomas
LLM in International Maritime Law
Executive Maritime Management
International Maritime Law
Marines Insurance Law and Practice
Maritime Energy
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| Graduation Mingle |
History of good and bad
The importance of international cooperation in seafaring has been recognized for centuries and was long manifested in maritime traditions, like ships welcomed to take refuge in foreign ports during bad weather, or turning from their intended course to help other ships in distress, irrespective of their nationality.
In a way, the WMU history started in 1912 when the giant ‘world’s safest ship’, the Titanic, collided with an iceberg and sank. At that time no international standard for security at sea existed. The tragedy rallied many countries in the world around the need of common standards for seafaring ships.
Shipping, for own reasons and while having knowledge of regulating standards, may not always implement these. For example, adherence to shipbuilding standards may have prevented the 1994 tragedy of the Scandinavian cruising ship Estonia. She sank In stormy weather on her sail from Helsinki to Tallin and more than 800 lives were lost. . Many, like I, recall, their exact whereabouts as the news of the Estonia disaster spread. I was having a coffee chat with a Finnish colleague at the UNICEF NY HQ. Stunned we calculated the proportion of the university city of Upsala’s law professionals who perished. They had chosen the Estonia’s conference facilities for their meeting. They were no more. The felt horror of the tragedy of the Estonia was similar to that later experienced after the terror attack in 2001 on New York’s Twin Towers.
International Maritime Organization (IMO) and Foundation of WMU
After WWII, an early international organization for seafaring in Geneva established the Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO). Its name was changed in 1982 to IMO. In 1958 the IMO Convention (based on an early Convention) entered into force. Numerous treaties and protocols followed. Be they on marine pollution, on compensation to those who suffered loss of such, and many more topics. These instruments are continually updated.
In the early 1980s, the IMO recognized a shortage of well-qualified, highly educated maritime experts, particularly in lesser developed nations. To address this gap, the IMO set out to create an institution that could provide high-level education necessary for dedicated professionals to implement international maritime conventions. Subsequently, in 1981, the IMO passed the Resolution A.501(XIII) which requested that the UN Secretary-General take action that a world maritime university be established, the future WMU.
Venue Malmö
Today Malmö (population 350,000 of total 10 million in Sweden) is an international city where 186 different nationalities are found among its residents and as many languages are represented.
But in the 1960s and 1970s Malmö was a rather small maritime city. Until 1968 the Kockums Shipyards (now closed) built super-tankers that sailed worldwide. When the Government of Sweden was invited to host an international maritime university and declared itself ready, Malmö acted quickly by offering the availability of teaching facilities and amenities like student flats and free bus tickets. Clearly, the city desired to become again a leading city in the maritime and oceanic world. Malmö was selected.
In August 1983 Malmö welcomed the first students for the first WMU academic year. The season of Nordic winter’s dark and cold days was imminent, a challenge for some of the students. However, by April when light started filling both days and nights, the climate was well lived.
The WMU students could come into contact with the many ethnic foods and restaurants or delight in the warm welcome at Swedish family dinners. A family might take ‘their’ student along to observe groups of seals that congregate at the Måkläppen rocks, or let the student ice-skate, sport which I heard that even students from tropical countries enjoyed. Over time, the students have seen Malmö’s city-scape change with, for example, the Year 2000 Bridge that connects Malmö and Denmark’s Copenhagen, and with the building of the majestic Turning Torso designed by Calatrava (architect also of the Sydney Opera House).
The importance of international cooperation in seafaring has been recognized for centuries and was long manifested in maritime traditions, like ships welcomed to take refuge in foreign ports during bad weather, or turning from their intended course to help other ships in distress, irrespective of their nationality.
In a way, the WMU history started in 1912 when the giant ‘world’s safest ship’, the Titanic, collided with an iceberg and sank. At that time no international standard for security at sea existed. The tragedy rallied many countries in the world around the need of common standards for seafaring ships.
Shipping, for own reasons and while having knowledge of regulating standards, may not always implement these. For example, adherence to shipbuilding standards may have prevented the 1994 tragedy of the Scandinavian cruising ship Estonia. She sank In stormy weather on her sail from Helsinki to Tallin and more than 800 lives were lost. . Many, like I, recall, their exact whereabouts as the news of the Estonia disaster spread. I was having a coffee chat with a Finnish colleague at the UNICEF NY HQ. Stunned we calculated the proportion of the university city of Upsala’s law professionals who perished. They had chosen the Estonia’s conference facilities for their meeting. They were no more. The felt horror of the tragedy of the Estonia was similar to that later experienced after the terror attack in 2001 on New York’s Twin Towers.
International Maritime Organization (IMO) and Foundation of WMU
After WWII, an early international organization for seafaring in Geneva established the Governmental Maritime Consultative Organization (IMCO). Its name was changed in 1982 to IMO. In 1958 the IMO Convention (based on an early Convention) entered into force. Numerous treaties and protocols followed. Be they on marine pollution, on compensation to those who suffered loss of such, and many more topics. These instruments are continually updated.
In the early 1980s, the IMO recognized a shortage of well-qualified, highly educated maritime experts, particularly in lesser developed nations. To address this gap, the IMO set out to create an institution that could provide high-level education necessary for dedicated professionals to implement international maritime conventions. Subsequently, in 1981, the IMO passed the Resolution A.501(XIII) which requested that the UN Secretary-General take action that a world maritime university be established, the future WMU.
Venue Malmö
Today Malmö (population 350,000 of total 10 million in Sweden) is an international city where 186 different nationalities are found among its residents and as many languages are represented.
But in the 1960s and 1970s Malmö was a rather small maritime city. Until 1968 the Kockums Shipyards (now closed) built super-tankers that sailed worldwide. When the Government of Sweden was invited to host an international maritime university and declared itself ready, Malmö acted quickly by offering the availability of teaching facilities and amenities like student flats and free bus tickets. Clearly, the city desired to become again a leading city in the maritime and oceanic world. Malmö was selected.
In August 1983 Malmö welcomed the first students for the first WMU academic year. The season of Nordic winter’s dark and cold days was imminent, a challenge for some of the students. However, by April when light started filling both days and nights, the climate was well lived.
The WMU students could come into contact with the many ethnic foods and restaurants or delight in the warm welcome at Swedish family dinners. A family might take ‘their’ student along to observe groups of seals that congregate at the Måkläppen rocks, or let the student ice-skate, sport which I heard that even students from tropical countries enjoyed. Over time, the students have seen Malmö’s city-scape change with, for example, the Year 2000 Bridge that connects Malmö and Denmark’s Copenhagen, and with the building of the majestic Turning Torso designed by Calatrava (architect also of the Sydney Opera House).
 |
| Old Harbour Master's Building and the 'Hinge' |
The WMU’s first location in Citadel Street is fondly remembered by alumni. Yet after 32 years there, more convenient space became needed. Malmö thus provided the WMU with its current location in the Old Harbour Master’s Building from 1911 in the central Fiskehamns Street. The Old Harbour Master’s Building is eye-catching with its style of Swedish National Romantic. A fine landmark that used to be the seat of the Swedish Maritime Administration. With WMU now on its premises this historic building became reconnected with its maritime history.
However, from the outset it was known that the Harbour Master’s Building was too small to accommodate yearly about 200 WMU students. An architectural competition led to the selection of the design for an addition-building. Inaugurated in 2015, the extension’s spectacular design of freely shaped modernistic angles is a bold architectural statement meant to connect the old city with the new city near former docklands. Locals named it the ‘Hinge’.
The ‘Hinge’ incorporates a new auditorium, a library-hub of rich maritime knowledge, multiple research labs, video-conferencing facilities and more. The old building and the new ‘Hinge’ stand not only side by side but are in an architectural way cleverly and functionally integrated with one another. For example, a lecture hall in the extension is supported at its back by the original brick wall of the old building.
 |
| Fused buildings |
The WMU academic year of 14 months is divided into three semesters where each contains several study modules.
Currently nearly 200 students are enrolled at the WMU in Malmö. They, and the WMU alumni, form a global maritime and oceans network worldwide of more than 6,000 professionals. Each year, about 50 countries are represented within the incoming class. In the Class of 2024, 35 percent of graduands were women, even more in the MSc programme with 40 percent women.
With an average age of 35 years, WMU students are mid-career professionals from maritime and ocean occupations. The basic entry requirement is a BA degree. Non-academic applicants with approved professional qualifications or who have sufficient professional experience (defined as responsible, managerial experience over a period of at least five years’ duration) may also be considered. Competence in English is required.
The majority of the WMU students in Malmö live at the campus of the Henrik Smith Residence located three km from the WMU building which is reached by bus service. The international network the students establish while living on campus benefits further from the tight faculty friendships they foster during the studies.
The WMU alumni hold positions of prominence around the world in ministries, as heads of maritime academies and naval organizations, as directors of shipping companies and ports, and many represent their home countries at the IMO and in international organizations and other fora.
Faculty
The WMU’s specialized and internationally renowned faculty lecture and run the study programmes while guiding the students. Visiting Guest Lecturers share with the students their connections with international and national maritime administrations and with the commercial shipping sectors and their alliances.
Finance
The WMU is fully funded by voluntary contributions for its functioning. Governments, shipping industry, NGOs, civil society, private sector and private donors join the Government of Sweden and the City of Malmö in continued provision of support to the WMU.
The WMU President, Professor Maximo Q. Mejia, Jr, ended his words to the graduands with an appeal:
“… I charge you today to always cherish the great benefits you have gained from this incredible academic programme that not only offered you advanced studies in maritime and ocean affairs, but also afforded you the opportunity to work and live together as global citizens in the true United Nations spirit of peace, understanding, harmony, and a shared resolve to make our world better place…”.
 |
| With WMU President Professor Maximo Q. Mejia, Jr |
WMU study programmes for the academic year 2023-2024
GRADUATES -
Maritime Safety and Environmental Administration
Ocean Sustainability, Governance and Management
Port Management
Shipping Managements and Logistics
Maritime Safety and Environmental Management
International Transport and Logistics
DISTANCE LEARNING COMPLETED: LLM and postgraduate diplomas
LLM in International Maritime Law
Executive Maritime Management
International Maritime Law
Marines Insurance Law and Practice
Maritime Energy
Very, very interesting, dear Franziska. Thank you so much for sharing this insight information about the WMU with us.
ReplyDeleteSince you attended this year's graduation ceremony and did capture so many joyful moments with the graduates in your photos, your contribution becomes so lively. I was entirely unaware about the WMU about which I never did hear anything. I will share it with my friends.
Wow, Franziska! Like Ute, I knew nothing about the WMU. What a fascinating specialized agency. So few people (well, at least Americans) know much, if anything, about the UN system. This is a lovely article and great photos -- full of happiness ... and a sense of responsibility!
ReplyDeleteThank you Franziska, for this interesting report and the beautiful photos. Ever since I lived and worked in Hamburg and then New York and now St.Croix, I have been a maritime enthusiast and have followed the tragedies of the collision of two freighters in the North Sea with "Verity" sinking in October 2023, and a year later the container`ship M/V "DALI" destroying the Key Bridge in Baltimore. I would have loved to study at the WMU in Malmoe.
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