Maritime Insurance Law

Maritime Conferences

The basic rules of modern international maritime law were formulated during the activities of the First, Second and Third United Nations Conferences on Maritime Laws or the Laws of the seas. The First UN Conference on the Admiralty law was held in the spring of 1958 in Geneva, Switzerland. Delegates from 79 countries participated in the conference and observers from 16 international organisations also attended the conference.

The conference accepted four conventions

·                    relating to  high seas

·                     relating to the territorial seas and adjacent zones

·                     relating to continental shelves

·                     relating to the fisheries and protection of living resources of high seas

. The positive value these conventions were left unresolved due to disagreements relating the Maritime law.

At Geneva in the spring 1960 where the Second UN Conferences on the Law of the Sea was held two problems which were the width of territorial sea and width of   the fishing zone jurisdiction were considered. 87 nations and observers from 24 specialised UN institutions and government agencies attended the conference.

A few nations like the USSR offered to recognise the width of the territorial sea to be 12 miles but others wanted the limit to up to just 6 miles. Due to such unexpected outcome and diverse options none of the proposals were accepted. Recently with the nations gaining independence, they stated their dissatisfaction over the existing provisions and norms of maritime laws. And hence the necessity to resolve these points of International maritime law and develop newer and more progressive rules and definitions was felt.

Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea in 1973 and delegations from more than 150 countries, both coastal and land-locked, and also observers. The Conference prepared and accepted the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982, which consisted of 17 parts including 320 articles and 9 appendices.

Strengthening the peace and increasing the well-being of the people, dealing with the practical problems regarding exploitation and use of the riches of the Ocean were taken into account. At the final meet in 1982 at Jamaica, this new Convention was ratified by representatives of 119 nations.

Thus in International Maritime Law the following basic concepts such as internal waters, territorial seas, adjacent zones, exclusive economic zones, continental shelves of coastal nations, the international region of the sea floor, the high seas etc are included and this legal mode is inherent in each part of the seas and sea floor of the World Ocean.