What is UNCLOS? Explain its salient features. (2026, 15 Marks)
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), signed at Montego Bay on 10 December 1982, entered into force on 16 November 1994; Cambodia’s ratification in February 2026 brought it to 172 parties, the European Union included, though not the United States. Tommy Koh, the conference president, called it “a constitution for the oceans”: it replaced the contest between Hugo Grotius’s Mare Liberum (1609) and John Selden’s Mare Clausum (1635) with zones of graded jurisdiction.
Maritime zones measured from baselines
| Zone | Extent | Coastal state’s position |
|---|---|---|
| Territorial sea | 12 nautical miles | Sovereignty, subject to innocent passage |
| Contiguous zone | 24 nm | Customs, fiscal, immigration and sanitary control |
| Exclusive Economic Zone | 200 nm | Sovereign rights over resources; others keep navigation and overflight |
| Continental shelf | 200 nm, extendable to 350 nm | Seabed resources; outer limits reviewed by the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf |
| High seas | Beyond the EEZ | Freedoms of all states |
- Transit passage through international straits cannot be suspended, the price naval powers extracted for the 200-mile EEZ. Iran, a signatory that never ratified, treats it as a right for parties only, and its restriction of Hormuz from March 2026 shows the stakes.
The Area and the common heritage
- The deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction is the “Area”, the common heritage of mankind, a principle Malta’s Arvid Pardo put to the General Assembly in 1967.
- The International Seabed Authority (ISA) at Kingston licenses activity there. Part XI’s redistributive design was diluted by the 1994 Implementation Agreement to bring the industrial states in.
- India became the first registered pioneer investor in 1987 and holds ISA exploration contracts in the Indian Ocean.
Compulsory dispute settlement
- Part XV makes settlement compulsory: under Article 287 states choose the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), the ICJ or arbitration. Delimitation disputes excluded under Article 298 go to compulsory conciliation (Timor-Leste–Australia, 2018).
- In Philippines v. China (12 July 2016) an Annex VII tribunal rejected “historic rights” inside the nine-dash line; Beijing rejected the award. India implemented the 2014 Bay of Bengal award.
Environment and new frontiers
- Part XII obliges states to protect the marine environment; ITLOS’s 2024 advisory opinion treated greenhouse-gas emissions as marine pollution.
- The BBNJ Agreement, signed by India in 2024, entered into force on 17 January 2026, adding high-seas protected areas and benefit-sharing from marine genetic resources.
- The ISA still lacked an exploitation code after its July 2026 session, while Washington moved to license seabed mining unilaterally.
Significance for India
India ratified in 1995; its coastline was re-assessed in 2025 at 11,098.81 km. R. P. Anand argued in Origin and Development of the Law of the Sea (1983) that “freedom of the seas” had served colonial maritime powers; the EEZ and the common heritage were the new states’ correction.
Conclusion
UNCLOS is the most complete codification achieved under UN auspices, a neoliberal institutionalist bargain that lowers the cost of ocean governance. The South China Sea, Hormuz and unilateral seabed mining mark its realist limit: powers accept the constitution only while it spares their core interests.