Law of the sea

2. TERRITORIAL WATERS Article 2(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)48 provides that, “[t]he sovereignty of a coastal State ex-tends, beyond its land territorial and internal waters and, in the case of an archipelagic State, its archipelagic waters, to an adjacent belt of sea, described as the territorial sea”. This maritime zone extends up to 12 nautical miles (Article 3, UNCLOS). The only major exception to this sovereign power of the state is the right of innocent passage, enshrined in Article 17 of the UNCLOS. Coastal States are entitled to regulate migration activities within their territorial sea and this clearly extends to measures intended to prevent the infringement of immigration laws. The coastal state…

B. THE CASE OF MV TAMPA The MV Tampa was a Norwegian merchant ship which was prevented by the Australian Government from entering into its territory. The Tampa rescued about 433 people in August 2001; many of them were of Afghan origin. These persons had been trying to reach Australia in a wooden fishing boat but the boat started sinking about 140 kilometers off the coast of Christmas Island. Some of the people aboard the ship required urgent medical attention so the Tampa decided to proceed to…

Why South China Sea is victim of disputes? The South China Sea is intentionally sited. It is sited in a way that it overlaps the main lanes of the sea between Asia, Middle East and the Europe. It becomes the main international way for sea trade and transportation, where most of the world’s largest traffic passes. As a global concern, the geopolitical and economic importance of the South China Sea lessens the secure navigation of tanks in water. The region plays a strategic maritime and military…

cargo, jurisdictional issues and many other such issues. No country can boast of to be self-sufficient, since all the countries are inter-dependant on each other for commodities like food grains, petroleum, iron & steel, coal, cement, medicine and drugs etc. And they can fulfill their needs only via trade. Before the invention of aircrafts, the only mode of transport and carriage available was either by road or by ship. All over the world, ships are a preferred means for trading, since they can…

negative effect on marine mammals such as sea otters, and whales. Mankind's negative effect on marine mammals traces back to the time mankind learns to efficiently kill whales in the 1800's since mankind learns to effectively hunt whales; additionally, in the 1900's mankind begins to hunt sea otters in California. Thankfully, as Tom Garrison states, a science professor, "In 1994, the International Whaling Commission voted overwhelmingly to ban whaling in about 21 million square kilometers around…

While each empire, Roman and Byzantine, were each located along the Mediterranean Sea, they shared multiple similarities and differences that shaped their empires and made them different from one another. Both the Roman and Byzantine Empires had an effective law code, however it changed from the 12 Tables to the Codes of Justinian. Another change that occurred was that the emperors of the Byzantine empire believed that they were part of God’s empire while the Roman empire didn’t really tie…

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible share many common elements amongst their narratives, but certain elements of these narratives such as the change of pace in characters, narratives, morals, and the general concept of the contexts make the two collections contradictory to one another. In addition, the narratives change pace through different events, results of different stories, different points of view, and through details that are or may not be mentioned when comparing the two collections.…

the rise of sea level. Climate…

Around the world today leatherback sea turtles are being killed at an alarming rate due to a variety of circumstances. From the commercial fishing industry to poaching, the population of this species has declined significantly over the past fifty years. However, there are ways to prevent this downward spiral. Through an educational approach, marine biologists and environmentalists should collaborate to form a nonprofit group to protect leatherback sea turtles throughout the world. Dermochelys…

Deep sea mining is a fairly new issue within the scientific community only being utilized in mineral collecting for the past two decades (Theil). Although this action is fairly new, it still can have devastating effects on ecosystems, especially the seafloor. “Because of the high demand for minerals and metals for making technological items, this new way of mining has gathered a lot of attention in the last five years. Three forms of deep-sea mineral resources have been considered thus far for…