Supporting countries to ratify and implement key IMO treaties is an essential part of IMO’s capacity building activities under the Integrated Technical Cooperation Programme. One example of this is the IMO-Norwegian Development Cooperation Agency (Norad) project to support six participating countries in south-east Asia in the legal, policy and institutional reforms and associated capacity building needed for effective ratification and implementation of a number of IMO marine environmental conventions. Senior officials of the merchant marine department (MMD) of the Government of Cambodia met with IMO officials last week (2 October) to take stock of progress made and decide the next steps, ahead of a planned regional meeting of high-level decision makers from the IMO-Norad project countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam), scheduled to take place in Bangkok, Thailand, in November 2015.