Book contents
- A ‘Constitution for the Oceans’
- A ‘Constitution for the Oceans’
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Foreword
- Abbreviations
- 1 End of the Old Order
- 2 Old Freedoms, New Rights
- 3 North, South, East and West
- 4 A Conference Collapses
- 5 Internationalising the Seabed
- 6 Passage through Straits
- 7 The Archipelagic Concept
- 8 New International Orders
- 9 The Bitter End
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Passage through Straits
From Innocent Passage to Transit Passage at the 1973–1982 Conference
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2025
- A ‘Constitution for the Oceans’
- A ‘Constitution for the Oceans’
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Foreword
- Abbreviations
- 1 End of the Old Order
- 2 Old Freedoms, New Rights
- 3 North, South, East and West
- 4 A Conference Collapses
- 5 Internationalising the Seabed
- 6 Passage through Straits
- 7 The Archipelagic Concept
- 8 New International Orders
- 9 The Bitter End
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
From 1967 onwards, the maritime powers revived their campaign against other states’ expanding claims to coastal waters, this time nudged along by a new member of the club: the USSR. Their greatest concern at this time was not the twelve-mile territorial sea limit, which they now deemed acceptable, nor fisheries, which took second place to strategic concerns, but rather the overlapping of straits by newly extended territorial seas. At the United Nations law of the sea conference of 1973–1982, they rejected the unsuspendable innocent passage regime set out in the Corfu Channel decision and the 1958 territorial sea convention, and agitated instead for ‘transit passage’ through straits. This regime, delinked from the idea of innocent passage, upheld freedom of navigation and overflight in straits used for international navigation, and confirmed that submarines were permitted to transit straits submerged. The straits states, wishing to retain some control over adjacent waters, managed to claw back one concession relating to enforcement if a vessel was ‘causing or threatening major damage to the marine environment of the straits’.
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- A ‘Constitution for the Oceans' , pp. 164 - 207Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025