Introduction

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (“Convention”) is an international agreement dealing with all traditional aspects of ocean governance and uses. It was signed on December 10, 1982 after 14 years of negotiations to which more than 150 countries representing all regions of the world participated. The Convention entered into force on November 16, 1994.

The Convention was a response to the need expressed by many States to elaborate a new and comprehensive regime for the law of the sea as well as an effort to achieve a “just and equitable international economic order”. The 320 articles and 9 annexes that comprise the Convention represent the codification of customary international law and its progressive development as well as the building blocks of three international bodies, the International Seabed Authority, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

The Convention has often been referred to as a “package deal” because of the circumstances in which it was negotiated, including the many different issues covered as well as the conflicting interests cutting across traditional political and regional alignments that the Convention sought to balance in light of the great number of States that participated.

Some of those conflicting interests (mostly having to do with the deep seabed regime) prevented the Convention from entering into force for many years after its signature in 1982. In order to resolve that impasse, in the early 1990, the United Nations Secretary General sponsored a series of consultations that led to the adoption of the 1994 “Agreement relating to the implementation of Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea” where States parties undertook to implement Part XI of the Convention in accordance with the provisions of the agreement: the adoption of the agreement made possible the entry into force of the Convention.

As of this date (December 1 2006) 152 States have ratified the Convention.

Historical Background

The law relating to the sea and its uses has been in a fluid state for many decades and has evolved around the concept of the freedom of the high seas. However, that concept has overtime been modified by the discovery of resources in the sea and its seabed beyond a State’s territorial sea, which – before the negotiation of the Convention – was considered the limit of a State’s jurisdictional reach.

A series of conferences were held in the 1950’s that led to the four 1958 Conventions on the Law of the Sea (The 1958 Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, the 1958 Convention on the High Seas, the 1958 Convention on Fishing and Conservation of Living Resources and the 1958 Convention on the Continental Shelf).

The daunting task of elaborating a new framework convention for the law of the sea began in 1967 when during a General Assembly meeting debating the preservation of the seabed and ocean floor for peaceful purposes, the concept of common heritage of humankind was first discussed in an international context. However, many other pressures, which involved a series of other economic, political and strategic factors fed the negotiations of the ensuing Third United Nations Law of the Sea Conference. Several developing countries wished to develop an exclusive economic zone that would allow States to have extensive rights over a 200-mile zone; they were also eager to establish international control over the seabed and its resources in order to prevent the more technologically advanced countries from extracting minerals. On the other hand, Western States wanted to preserve the freedom of navigation as much as possible and thus opposed any weakening of the freedom of passage through international straits; they also wanted to protect their economic interests by suggesting that the resources of the high seas and the seabed should be exploited freely.

Unlike the 1958 and 1960 Law of the Sea Conferences, the Third United Nations Law of the Sea Conference did not work over a pre-existing document or report, but was rather a political process where decisions were mainly taken by “consensus” and much of the elaboration process took place in small or informal meetings and working groups were established on the basis of a State’s interest for a particular issue.

Further Reading

• Churchill R. R., A. V. Lowe. 1988. The Law of the Sea. Manchester (2nd ed.) ISBN: 1578230292
• Oxman B. H. 1994. The 1994 Agreement and the Convention. American Journal of International Law, 88:687-96.
• Treves T. 1990. Codification du Droit International et Pratique des Etats dans le Droit de la Mer. HR IV p.9
• 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (full text)