Geneva Convention on the Law of the Sea

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The Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea of the United Nations are four international agreements to regulate the law of the sea that were concluded on April 29, 1958 at the conclusion of the first UN Conference on the Law of the Sea :

  • Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Adjacent Zone, entry into force 10 September 1964
  • Convention on the High Seas, entry into force September 30, 1962
  • Convention on Fisheries and the Conservation of the Biological Riches of the High Seas (also “… Conservation of Living Treasures…”), entered into force on March 20, 1966
  • Continental Shelf Convention, entry into force June 10, 1964

An additional protocol made the settlement of resulting disputes before the International Court of Justice mandatory. The conventions and protocol were further developed by the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea .

Switzerland has ratified all of the agreements. The Federal Republic of Germany has not signed the Convention on Fisheries and the Conservation of the Living Treasures of the High Seas and ultimately only ratified the Convention on the High Seas with objections and the Protocol. Austria has only ratified the Convention on the High Seas.

The first three conventions essentially represented codifications of existing customary international law and further developments of existing international law, whereas the Convention on the Continental Shelf was uncharted territory in international law. The breadth of the territorial sea , about which opinions had been changing since the 1921 declaration of the expansion of territorial waters from three to twelve nautical miles, had to be left open. The reason for this lay in the attempt by the conventions to essentially maintain the division into territorial sea and high seas . This collided with the claims made by many states for exclusive economic rights of use far beyond the previous territorial sea. In 1945 the USA claimed the exclusive use of its continental shelf and the establishment of "fishery conservation zones " for itself without setting a seaward border . More and more countries followed this example. Within the dual system of territorial sea / high seas, this required a correspondingly wide expansion of the territorial sea, which was actually not wanted by anyone. Only on the question of the use of the continental shelf could extensive agreement be reached. The solution to the problem of fishing zones by creating exclusive economic zones was reserved for the 1982 Agreement. The regulation made there for the use of the seabed outside the continental shelf was still inapplicable in 1958 due to a lack of technical feasibility.

Fishing outside the territorial sea remained largely a matter of mutual agreement between the parties, including the coastal states; if necessary, an arbitration procedure by an international commission was planned. The Convention on the Continental Shelf, on the other hand, established exclusive rights for coastal states outside the narrow territorial sea for the first time. These extend to the exploration and exploitation of natural resources of the continental shelf, ie mineral resources and non-buoyant soil organisms . If a continental shelf borders on several states, the principle of equidistance applies , which draws the border line at the same distance from both coasts. That part of the continental shelf in which a state has rights under the Convention is not part of its territory; there is also no influence on the status of overlying waters.

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