Editing Container ship (section)

===Flag states===
International law requires that every merchant ship be registered in a country, called its [[flag state]].<ref name="icftu7">ICFTU et al., 2002, p. 7.</ref>  A ship's flag state exercises regulatory control over the vessel and is required to inspect it regularly, certify the ship's equipment and crew, and issue safety and pollution prevention documents.  {{as of|2006}}, the United States [[Bureau of Transportation Statistics]] count 2,837&nbsp;container ships of {{DWT|10,000|long|disp=long}} or greater worldwide.<ref name="bts">Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 2007, p. 80.</ref> [[Panama]] was the world's largest [[flag state]] for container ships, with 541 of the vessels in its registry.<ref name="bts"/>  Seven other flag states had more than 100 registered container ships: [[Liberia]] (415), [[Germany]] (248), [[Singapore]] (177), [[Cyprus]] (139), the [[Marshall Islands]] (118) and the [[United Kingdom]] (104).<ref name="bts"/>  The Panamanian, Liberian, and Marshallese flags are open registries and considered by the [[International Transport Workers' Federation]] to be [[flags of convenience]].<ref name="itf-list">{{cite web|url=http://www.itfglobal.org/flags-convenience/flags-convenien-183.cfm |title=FOC Countries |publisher=International Transport Workers' Federation |date=2005-06-06 |access-date=2010-07-02 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100718210353/http://www.itfglobal.org/flags-convenience/flags-convenien-183.cfm |archive-date=2010-07-18 }}</ref>  By way of comparison, traditional maritime nations such as the United States and Japan only had 75 and 11 registered container ships, respectively.<ref name="bts"/>