Law of the Seas
Category: Global Disarmament
Strength: Mild
Proposed by: Bears Armed Mission
Description: ACKNOWLEDGING that nations have the right to claim jurisdiction, for legal and economic purposes, over those parts of the seas that are adjacent to their lands,
CONCERNED that if such claims are taken to excess they have the potential to destabilise international security,
SEEKING to remedy this situation, whilst taking into account nations’ legitimate interests;
1. DEFINES the term ‘sea border’ as the point where waters meet the land at mean low tide, or where such a border would exist at sea level in the case of undersea nations;
2. ACKNOWLEDGES that, subject to any limits that WA law places on national rights and unless these terms would create conflicting claims,
A) Waters within 24 nautical miles (‘NM’) of a member nation's sea border, and any further waters that are enclosed by these, shall be considered that nation’s 'Territorial Waters' over which the nation shall have sovereign control and may enforce any and all of its own laws;
B) All of the waters within 200 nautical miles of a member nation's sea border, whether these are within its own Territorial Waters or are International Waters, and any further waters that are enclosed by these, shall be counted as its 'Exclusive Economic Zone' (‘EEZ’) within which it has sole authority over the exploration and use of natural resources;
C) Each of these zones also includes the relevant sections of sea-floor;
D) A nation’s territorial jurisdiction also extends over offshore installations located within its EEZ, and over ships registered in that nation while those are in International Waters;
3. STATES that in the case of conflicting claims between member nations any waters where two or more nations’ claims would overlap shall be divided along lines mid-way between those nations’ sea borders, unless those nations freely agree on an alternative partition instead;
4. URGES any member nations whose claims conflict with those of any non-members to seek peaceful agreement on basis of these same rules with those other nations;
5. FOUNDS the World Assembly Nautical Commission (or ‘WANC’), gives this agency the right and duty of binding arbitration in any disputes about this resolution’s interpretation that might arise between WA member nations, and also allows it to provide arbitration in relevant disputes involving any non-member nations who actually volunteer to accept this service;
Co-author: Cobdenia.
OOC
This proposal is intended as a replacement for the recently-repealed GA Resolution # 47 ‘Law of the Sea’, and was drafted with permission from that previous law’s author Cobdenia to re-use any of his material that seemed suitable. It was drafted in these forums (here), but I’m starting this new thread for it now —now that it’s actually reached the submission stage — because as I wasn’t the person who actually started that earlier discussion I can’t adjust its opening post as necessary…
I sent the proposal for a test run during this last week, without a TG campaign, and it managed to get at least 56 of the 73 approvals that would have taken it to quorum: I’m re-submitting it today, and this time around I will be campaigning actively to get it approved.
Approval link: Law of the Seas.
Firstly, I would like to credit Quadratic Form for their extensive input during the drafting process: If the rules had allowed me to credit two co-authors within the submitted draft, rather than just one, then I’d have named them there alongside Cobdenia… but, as the rules do set that limit, they agreed
(TG discussion) that naming Cobdenia instead of them would be the less worse approach.
(Yes, if it had come to a case of Quadratic Form submitting one of their drafts instead of me submitting one of mine, then I’d have made the same decision and agreed that they should name Cobdenia rather than me as co-author…)
Secondly, here’s how this proposal addresses the various points that were used in the repeal:
1. The former resolution [accidentally] referred to “The United Nations” rather than to “The World Assembly”: This reference has been fixed.
2. The former resolution’s rules for setting the limit of territorial waters, using the ‘sea border’ at low tide, allow nations to use claims to ownership of “islands, sandbars or atolls” as the basis for extending territorial claims outwards and outwards: This proposal takes the same approach as the former resolution, regardless of that complaint, because those are [basically] the same rules that apply in RL and that detail of their application doesn’t seem to be a significant problem here. The repeal’s authors were a bit vague about the details of how they themselves would prefer to replace those rules, but if they care to discuss the matter here (which they didn’t bother to do during the drafting stage…) then I’ll explain any problems that I see with their approach… although currently, unfortunately, I am unable to access these forums Monday-Friday so my response would have to wait until next Saturday instead…
3. The repeal asserted that having limits to territorial waters set by WA law was somehow more likely to lead to conflict _ But seriously, isn’t it leaving those limits undefined by international law, so nations that nations are free to argue with each other about the matter and to take whatever limits they can enforce, that’s much more likely to do that?!?
4. The former resolution didn’t address the problem of preventing maritime pollution: And neither does this one, either, because in my opinion that subject is complex enough by itself for any ‘proper’ treatment of it to require a complete resolution of its own… and trying to cram legislation on the topic into this proposal would probably have got this proposal deleted by the Mods (when it was submitted), on the grounds that it was trying to cover too much material that belonged in another ‘Category’ rather than the specified one, anyway…
However the passage of this proposal wouldn’t block the subsequent passage of further WA legislation to cover the pollution problem. (Actually, the existence of the former resolution ‘Law of the Sea’ wasn’t a barrier to such legislation either, so anybody who voted for the repeal because of that argument needn’t have done so…)
Thirdly, to answer a few more questions that I suspect might get raised _
1. “What’s with the ‘Global Disarmament’ label? I object to the WA telling me that I have to cut my nation’s armed forces!”![i] _ Relax, you don’t have to do anything of the kind. That label is there simply because each GA proposal has to be assigned to one or another of the pre-set categories when it’s submitted, and as having territorial limits defined by international law in this way seems as though it could reasonably reduce the scope for conflict [i]slightly this looked to me like the most justifiable Category to use here.
2. “Why has the limit for Territorial Waters been moved out from 12NM to 24NM?” _ When I researched this subject during the drafting process I found that RL international law actually allows nations to extend their jurisdiction out that far for some purposes (such as tackling smuggling, medical quarantines, and — yes — preventing maritime pollution…) by declaring the existence of a ‘Contiguous Zone’ just outside of their actual Territorial Waters, and suggested including that rule in this proposal: However the consensus amongst people commenting was that would be an unnecessary complication, and that it would be easier just to extend the limit for actual Territorial Waters instead.
3. “Why have you dropped the clause about passages through straits?” _ That’s going to be part of a [separate] wider proposal on rights of peaceful (or “innocent”) passage through territorial waters, instead.
Priceless.
