The third United Nations conference on the Law of the Sea

Abstract

During the past decade a number of factors have combined to render obsolete many of the decisions arrived at during the 1958 Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea. For this reason the United Nations convened a new Conference on the Law of the Sea. The mandate of this Conference includes the establishment of an international régime and machinery for the area and resources of the sea‐bed beyond national jurisdiction, a definition of this area and a broad range of issues including the régime of the high seas, the continental shelf, territorial sea, contiguous zone, fishing, preservation of the marine environment and scientific research.

The first organisational session of the Conference took place at New York at the end of 1973 and the first substantative session at Caracas during July/August 1974. Because of the complex mandate the Conference did not achieve any definite results during its Caracas session. All the key issues were, however, identified and discussed to the extent that it was possible, at the conclusion of the Caracas session, to discern the outlines of the future convention.

The next session of the Conference will take place at Geneva during April/May 1975.