NationStates Jolt Archive

The United Nations,

WISHING to formally codify the rules and regulations of the sea

RESOLVES:
1. That all areas of sea more than 20 kilometres from an internationally recognised settled landmass or scientific research station are described as international waters. The UN may permit archipelagos to have the 20 kilometre limit start from the outside islands and allow waters inside the archipelago to be claimed by the nation who owns it.
2. That all 'international waters' shall be outside the sovereignty of any member nation and that no nation can claim to have sovereignty over them.
3. That all nations shall have in or above international waters, unless in a Maritime Preservation Zone:
a) Freedom to fish in designated fishing areas, subject to UN quotas.
b) Freedom to fly
c) Freedom of navigation
d) Freedom to lay cables, pipelines and underwater installations, unless in a Maritime Preservation Zone
4. That a UN Commission be established to determine areas of outstanding marine beauty or high ecological sensitivity and designate them Maritime Preservation Zones.
5. An International Maritime Standards Bureau will be created to set international rules on navigation, working hours and other matters it deems appropriate to ensure safety at sea.
6. All states can have ships under their flag. Any state may establish a registry for ships permitted to fly their nations flag. These vessels must be duly owned and operated by citizens of the respective country to be allowed to register with said country. No state shall permit the establishment of a "flag of convenience". Any vessel receiving an "SOS" or distress call should render immediate assistance, no matter their country of origin or current war status.
7. All states shall ensure that vessels under their flag are built and kept to proper seaworthy standards, as defined by the International Maritime Standards Bureau.
8. Piracy is prohibited in international waters and in the territorial waters of any state.
9. Piracy shall be defined as any illegal acts of violence, detention, theft or damage committed by a private vessel or aircraft, or its crew or passengers, against another vessel or aircraft, or the passengers, crew or property of the latter. "Illegal" will be defined by bilateral diplomacy, with the UN intervening if the two nations cannot agree.
10. That all nations will do their utmost to tackle piracy in international waters.
11. That no nation shall shelter pirates. Nations may only employ privateers (which are defined as pirates who work officially for a government) in a time of declared war)
12. That any flagged warship may board a ship if it has reasonable grounds to believe it is engaged in piracy, people trafficking, smuggling, terrorism or any other international crime. If the search finds nothing, the boarded ship shall be compensated by the nation that boarded it to a mutually agreeable value. A database of searches shall be kept by the UN to aid law enforcement. On boarding or attacking a vessel, the warship must immediately run up its national colours or the action will be considered an act of piracy.
13. That all nations shall strive to prevent pollution of international waters and harm to marine wildlife, except where the UN has permitted fishing.
14. All UN resolutions that affect member nations also apply to actions carried out by them or their citizens in international waters.
15. All nations with navigable waterways linking their coast and a landlocked country are encouraged to reach agreements on their use by vessels of the latter country.

It is so resolved.

(ooc: congratulations on writing cogent, well-thought-out, and interesting resolution.)

We are unable to give our support to this resolution. As it stands, we must oppose it.

This resolution lacks any provision for a 200-km economic exclusion zone. Tanah Burung depends heavily on fisheries for its food supply. If the areas off our coast line were to be declared international waters and opened to widepread fishing from other countries, this could threaten our national food security. We must reserve the right to expel foreign fishing vessels from these areas in order to prevent overfishing and the depletion of fish stock. We also have plans to farm the sea-bed and must insist on complete control of the sea-bed, and its natural resources, to a limit of 200 km from our shores.

We are quite prepared to have UN environmental standards prevail within this sovereign 200-km limit, but require sovereignty or else we will face the risk of starvation. We would oppose other nations laying cable and the like within our 200-km maritime territory. Abandoning much of the global commons to a defintion as "internaitonal waters" risks handing their potentially vast resources to a first-come, first-served scramble in which the powerful and wealthy nations would have an advantage.

Finally, we suggest that the law of the sea must include guidelines on borders. Borders between the maritime territories of differnet countries should be based on a median-line principle, and not on the outdated continental shelf principle. That is to say, where territorial water claims overlap, the median between the land territores shall be considered the international border.

Please note that there was extensive give-and-take on this proposal prior to this submission. Prior discussion can be found here (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=353238).

While Frisbeeteria still opposes certain aspects of this proposal on ideological grounds, we applaud the effort that Serconea put into it. Well and properly done, Serconea.

Anthronesia also wishes to question the rationale behind Article 11. Although there is no resolution currently standing the United Nations, we hold mercenary practices to be contrary to the sensibility that a just war is not to be engaged in for profit. Mercenaries, as such, benefit from conflict, and the possibility of including Privateers in this category reccomends that members should not permit any resolution to pass in which mercantilism is in any way endorsed or permitted.