With the deposit with the International Maritime Organization (IMO) of the notification of the subscription by Bangladesh and Liberia of the Convention for Safe And Environmentally Friendly Ship Recycling, which has been adopted in Hong Kong on May 15, 2009, the new international legislation regulating ship demolition activities will enter into force on June 26, 2025. With the signing of the two states, in fact, the conditions for the application of the Convention were fulfilled, which had to be ratified by at least 15 nations and by a number of states together representing at least 40% of the maritime transport mercantile world in terms of tons of gross tonnage of the fleets and whose ship recycling capacity was not less than 30% of the gross tonnage of the vessels of the fleets of these states. The signing of Bangladesh and Liberia has given the decisive push for the introduction of the legislation as the first nation one of the largest countries in the world to carry out naval demolition activities and being Liberia one of the states of largest flag in the world in terms of the tonnage of gross tonnage of its fleet.

Congratulating Bangladesh and Liberia, IMO Secretary General Kitack Lim, highlighted that " this is an important day for the IMO and is truly a historic step forward for the international shipping industry, for the environment marine and, above all, for the local workers and communities in the recycling countries of ships globally. " Lim invited the other IMO member states that have not yet acceded to the Hong Kong Convention to subscribe to it as soon as possible.

Currently the Convention has been ratified by Bangladesh, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ghana, Japan, India, Liberia, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, the Netherlands, Panama, Portugal, the Republic of the Congo, São Tomé and Principe, Serbia, Spain and Turkey. The 22 contracting states account for around 45.81% of the gross tonnage of the world's merchant fleet and the recycling activity of the vessels carried out in these nations over the past ten years amounted to 23.85 million tonnes of tonnage lorda, equal to 3.31% of the overall volume of the world's ship recycling activities.