UNCLOS FACT SHEET

 

·        The United Nations Law of the Seas is an Umbrella Convention that began in the Cold War era of 1958. UNCLOS I was born of the idea that the high seas and their ocean floors were storehouses of mineral deposits with great strategic importance.

 

·        The first order of business was to define and give legal legitimacy to the notion of the limits of national sovereignty into the off shore tidelands.  The three nautical mile limit was recognized by Hugo Grotius, the Dutch Father of International Law and Trade, under the Doctrine of Mare Liberum (1609). That doctrine was a Northern free trader’s alternative to the prior doctrine of  Mare Clausum under which the Catholic Church granted divinely inspired exclusive territorial rights to the royal courts of  Spain and Portugal. The limit was based on: 1.) the cannon-shot-limit rule of the day: 2.) the line-of-sight boundary  drawn from shoreline to the horizon; 3.) the historical precedence of the Scandinavian League.

 

·        By 1982, The Second Order of Business was to extend  the doctrine of Mare Nostrum to the Area of the High Seas. Under that doctrine, landlocked Nation-States would become  “Stakeholders” in the Ocean Commons. Legitimacy was established by granting Plenary Power to key commissions and agencies. The key commissions are: The International Maritime Organization, the Tribunal, and the International Seabed Authority

 

·        By 1994, The Third Order of Business was to activate the consensus of 60 UN member states who given assent, signed  or ratified UNCLOS 111.