As a result, there is an ongoing international debate and a proposal for introducing an international law to grant ‘place of refuge”. This debate received international attention in early 2000 when several incidents took place due to the “refusal or denial of place of refuge”. CONTAINER CARGO FIRESBesides oil tanker fires, in recent times there have been fires on board container ships. The international insurance industry says one container ship fire occurs every two weeks somewhere in the world. Although there has been no instance of denial of ‘place of refuge’ in Sri Lanka, ships passing through its territorial waters are always in probable, unintended “place of refuge”.
