STATES PARTIES TO LAW OF SEA CONVENTION CONCLUDE SIXTH MEETING
Press Release
SEA/1540
STATES PARTIES TO LAW OF SEA CONVENTION CONCLUDE SIXTH MEETING
19970320 The States parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea concluded their sixth regular meeting at Headquarters on Friday, 14 March, after electing the 21 members of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.During their five-day meeting, the States parties also considered the draft protocol on the privileges and immunities of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, though a working group established to finalize the draft was unable to conclude its work.
The States parties will convene at Headquarters for their seventh regular meeting from 19 to 23 May, at which they are expected to consider the rules of procedure of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the draft budget of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the privileges and immunities of the Tribunal.
Orlando Rebagliati (Argentina) was elected President of the meeting.
Commission on Limits of Continental Shelf
The meeting was held primarily to prepare for and conduct the first election of the 21 members of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, in accordance with the Convention and its Annex II.
The Convention gives coastal States jurisdiction over the resources of their continental shelf up to 200 miles from their coasts. In cases where the actual shelf (the natural prolongation of the land territory of a coastal States) extends beyond 200 miles, coastal States can claim jurisdiction over areas that may extend up to 350 miles or more, provided they meet certain technical criteria established in the Convention.
The Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf is the body established in the Convention to assist coastal States wishing to claim extended continental shelf jurisdiction. The Commission is: to consider the data and other material submitted by coastal States concerning the outer limits of the continental shelf in areas where those limits extend beyond 200 nautical miles, and to make recommendations to the coastal States; and to provide scientific and technical advice, if requested by the coastal State concerned, during the preparation of such data.
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According to the Convention, the 21 members of the Commission were to serve in their personal capacity and to be experts in the field of geology, geophysics or hydrography. The members were to serve for a five-year term. In addition, the membership of the Commission was to reflect the principle of equitable geographical representation, with at least three members elected from each geographical region. Following the entry into force of the Convention, the States parties established 5 November 1996 as the deadline for the submission of nominations, and 13 March 1997 as the date of the election. In all, 26 nominations were submitted for the 21 seats available.
Following informal consultations during the meeting, it was decided that for the purposes of the first election only, the Commission would be composed as follows: five members from the African States Group; five members from the Asian States Group; two members from the Eastern European States Group; four members from the Latin American and Caribbean States Group; and five members from the Western European and Other States Group.
The meeting held three ballots on 13 March to select the 21 members. The following candidates were elected to five-year terms: Alexandre Tagore Medeiros de Albuquerque (Brazil); Osvaldo Pedro Astiz (Argentina); Lawrence Folajimi Awosika (Nigeria); Aly I. Beltagy (Egypt); Samuel Sona Betah (Cameroon); Harald Brekke (Norway); Galo Carrera Hurtado (Mexico); André C.W. Chan Chim Yuk (Mauritius); Peter F. Croker (Ireland); Noel Newton St. Claver Francis (Jamaica); Kazuchika Hamuro (Japan); Karl H.F. Hinz (Germany); A. Bakar Jaafar (Malaysia); Mladen Juracic (Croatia); Yuri Borisovitch Kazmin (Russian Federation); Iain C. Lamont (New Zealand); Lu Wenzheng (China); Chisengu Leo M'Dala (Zambia); Yong-Ahn Park (Republic of Korea); Daniel Rio (France); and K.R. Srinivasan (India).
Following the election, the representative of Mexico, on behalf of the Latin American and Caribbean States, said the distribution of seats and acceptance of all the candidatures submitted applied only to the first elections. The agreement did not imply that the same could be repeated in the future and was without prejudice to the right of any regional group to seek a different number of seats in future elections, based on the Convention's fundamental principle of equitable geographical representation of States parties and on the right for each region to have not less than three seats.
Privileges and Immunities The sixth meeting also continued the consideration of the draft agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. An open-ended working group met under the chairmanship of Martin Smejkal (Czech Republic), a vice-president of the meeting. The working group provisionally adopted a majority of the agreement, while a number of draft articles were left pending for substantive consideration at the seventh meeting of States parties. In a statement to the States parties, the Chairman of the working group urged interested delegations to consult during the inter- sessional period with a view of formulating consensus provisions on pending articles.
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